How the elections work

Be involved ... in the political process

You won’t be alone if you’re confused, for Scotland now has four different voting systems for each of the four different areas of franchise – to local councils, to the Scottish Parliament, to the House of Commons, and to the European Parliament!

We will be voting in two of these areas on 3rd May 2007...

• For the Scottish Parliament, the method of voting is known as the Additional Member System.

You have two votes – one for your local area (the constituency) and one for the wider region in which your constituency is located (the regional or list vote). There are eight regions in Scotland.

Your constituency vote elects a Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) on a first-past-the-post system. That is, the candidate who polls the most votes is elected, even if they don’t have an absolute majority of the votes cast. 73 MSPs are elected in this way.

Your regional or list vote elects a further 56 MSPs on the basis of proportional representation. Parties are allocated additional seats in the regions dependent on the number of constituency seats it has gained. If a party has won a large number of constituency seats, it will be allocated fewer regional seats. Smaller parties will often put up candidates in the regional lists only, because that way they have a better chance of having some MSPs elected.

• For local councils, a new system of voting will be introduced on 3rd May, called the Single Transferable Vote (STV)

Your former council ward will be joined with one or more adjacent wards and you will now have the opportunity to elect a number of councillors – probably 3 or 4 - to this new ‘super ward’, rather than the one councillor you did before.

The STV system allows electors to rank the candidates. You vote 1 on the ballot paper for the candidate you would most like to be elected, 2 for your second choice, and so on. You can vote for as many or as few candidates as you like. A system of transferring your vote from your various candidates ensures a fair allocation of votes in relation to each candidate.

More detailed information on Scotland’s voting systems can be found on the Scottish Executive's Vote Scotland website.

How do I vote?

The fact that governments frequently change from election to election indicates that not everyone always votes for the same political party, although many people do.

Often, it is difficult to agree with everything that a political party stands for, and so one might be tempted not to vote at all. Even although we may agree with the general principles of one political party, there can be particular issues in the manifesto which we would find it difficult to endorse.

However, it is important that Christians take time to assess how well any party, or any individual candidate, reflects our system of values based on our Biblical faith.

You can do this in a number of ways:

• Looking at the manifestos of the various parties (see the ‘ Political Party Links’ page on this web site)
• Organising, or attending, an election forum where you can address particular questions to candidates (see the ‘Organising a Hustings Meeting’ page on this web site)
• Ask your candidates to express their views in relation to CARE’s Scottish Manifesto   (see the ‘Manifesto’ page on this web site)

Nearer the election, CARE will be contacting supporters in particular constituencies about some of the views we have received from candidates in response to a number of policy questions.