ALLAN C Steele suggests that all 129 of our MSPs should be elected from constituencies like the present 73 Constituency MSPs (Letters, 5 May). If that were done the result might look like that for the 2015 Westminster General Election when, in Scotland, one party won 95 per cent of the seats with only 50 per cent of the votes. I am sure no-one would want a Scottish Parliament like that, no matter which party was in the ascendant.
But Mr Steele makes several very valid points when he draws attention to problems arising from the party list part of the voting system by which regional MSPs are elected at present. The most effective solution would be to change the voting system to Single Transferable Vote (STV-PR), already in use to elect the assembly in Northern Ireland and for local authority councils here in Scotland. That would involve multi-member constituencies for mainland Scotland, with sizes tailored to local geography and recognised communities.
With STV-PR all the MSPs would be elected on the same basis and all would be directly accountable to a constituency of local voters.
STV-PR allows voters to vote for the candidates they really want to see elected. And there would be no need for any of the tactical voting described by Iain Macwhirter (“Two forms of voting can be a Holyrood double whammy”, The Herald, May 5). The Additional Member System (AMS) we use to elect the Scottish Parliament is, by far, the most challenging voting system for voters. To vote effectively and avoid wasting their votes, voters really need information that is just not available.
Please note that this is written before the results of the 2016 Scottish Parliament elections are known. The recommendation to change the voting system to STV-PR is not made in the hope of favouring any party or holding back any party. The aim is simply to make the Scottish Parliament properly representative of those who vote and to make all the elected MSPs more directly accountable to their local constituents.
Dr James Gilmour,
24/12 East Parkside, Edinburgh.
FOR the first and probably only time, I find myself in disagreement with Ruth Marr (Letters, May 5). I have no idea why Thursday was originally chosen to be the day on which all general and local elections are held, but it is high time it was changed to Sunday, or even Saturday and Sunday, to encourage higher turnouts. Voting could end at say 6pm or 7 pm so that almost all of the results could be announced late on Sunday evening, instead of waiting for the results while counting goes on into “the wee sma’ hours”.
Despite being an elder in the Church of Scotland, I have no religious objection to Sundays being used for election voting, as already happens in many nominally Christian nations around Europe. On Sundays most of our shops are now open, football fixtures attracting large crowds are normal, and other major sporting events take place to maximise attendances. Surely General Elections are at least as important as these, and I am convinced turnout would increase if they were held at weekends. An added benefit is that schooling would not be disrupted by schools having to be closed on Thursdays when used as polling stations.
And talking about voting, when is the hopelessly antiquated voting system in the UK Parliament going to be abandoned and replaced by more efficient methods now easily available? At the moment every vote takes about 15 minutes as hordes of MPs trot out of the Chamber and queue up in corridors to have their names ticked off on a sheet of paper before the result is formally announced. Sometimes when there are a number of contested amendments more than an hour of valuable debating time is wasted.
Tradition may be important, but efficiency, convenience and common sense are even more so, both in General elections and in the rituals of Westminster. It is time for a change.
Iain AD Mann,
7 Kelvin Court, Glasgow.
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