IT is quiet out there. Too quiet. Certainly too quiet for an election campaign. Where are the rallies, the standing room only press conferences, the famously heated debates?

As with everything else this past year, Covid has left its mark on the Scottish Parliament elections. While the ways people will vote have not changed, how the campaigns are conducted and covered have been adapted to suit the times.

The changed tactics could be seen last week when BBC Scotland held the first of two live televised leaders’ debates.

The set looked familiar enough, with the five leaders of the larger parties, plus moderator Sarah Smith, standing at podiums.

But the podiums were further apart than usual to comply with social distancing rules, and the participants were arranged in a circle, facing each other, instead of a semicircle, looking out to a studio audience.

In place of a studio audience was a virtual one dialling in from home. At times, the event looked like one very large Zoom call.

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Having a virtual audience instead of the “real” thing was a drawback. Where a live studio audience can applaud, laugh, or scoff when they wish, and be heard doing so, that was not possible here. It is difficult enough to make out what is being said when politicians talk over each other, never mind having the audience do it as well.

Scotland is not alone in having a pandemic election. There are local council elections in England, mayoral and London Assembly elections, police and crime commissioner elections in England and Wales, and elections to the Welsh Parliament.

Nor is the UK the first country to go to the polls during the pandemic. Last November the Electoral Commission, the independent body which oversees elections in the UK, looked at best practice elsewhere to see what lessons could be learned.

The initial response to the pandemic had been to postpone elections, the Commission noted. Then the tide began to turn as more was discovered about how the virus spread.

Quoting a study by The International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, the Commission said at least 80 countries and territories held elections between February and November 2020, including South Korea and New Zealand. Voting was postponed in 73, but 39 elections subsequently took place.

The biggest vote took place in the US. While there had been fears that Covid would keep people away from voting stations, a record 154.8 million turned up to cast their ballots. The pandemic sent the number of postal votes soaring to almost 66m, another record.

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Media coverage was affected by the pandemic. Mr Trump was out and about on the campaign trial, carrying on mass rallies, despite the advice from medics that they risked becoming super-spreader events.

In contrast, the Biden campaign held drive-in, socially distanced get-togethers. Crucially, the candidate stayed home for the most part. Had it been any other year that would not have been possible. As it was, opponents accused the Biden camp of using the pandemic to hide their gaffe-prone candidate from public and press scrutiny.

In Scotland, voters can hardly complain that about a lack of coverage. In the past few months there has been wall-to-wall reporting on Scottish politics across every medium. If anything, voters are sick of the sight of the same old faces and voices.

That is not the same, however, as being informed about policies. But here, little has changed. The information is still out there, whether in leaflets posted through the door, on websites, in newspapers, in party political broadcasts, and elsewhere.

One development that is new is the “voter panel” set up by BBC Scotland. In February the corporation issued an open invitation to people who wanted to share their “stories, questions and concerns” with the broadcaster, the idea being that this would inform output.

To ensure the panel would be balanced and representative of the electorate, applicants had to say if they were involved in political activism, how they voted in the Scottish independence referendum, the EU referendum, the last Holyrood election, and in the one coming up.

“The panel is designed to reflect the broad range of political opinions on many of the issues affecting Scotland,” says the corporation.

“That could be based on voting history, views on big issues like independence, as well as representing the diversity of the country based on age, gender, and social demographics as well as where people live.”

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The biggest difference can be seen not in the relationship between parties and voters, but between parties and the press. Campaign launches and party conferences are virtual affairs which go more or less smoothly depending on the technical competence of the organisers. Thus far, Alex Salmond and his Alba Party are providing masterclasses in how not to run such events.

If none of the traditional coverage appeals, voters can always turn to Scots Squad’s Chief Inspector Miekelson (played by Jack Docherty), who has been given an hour-long show on BBC Scotland on April 29 to interview politicians and “take the temperature of the nation”. Mind how you go.