May 06 2007
Two days on - and still no “Scottish” government!
The mess in Scotland sums up the Brown/Blair achievement.
The UK government approved the decision to run two elections on the same day, on three different voting systems - First past the post, the list and Single Transferable vote. There are not many people outside Politics faculties and government itself who could describe to you the way each of these works and why we should hold elections under such different systems. The result was chaos - no winner, endless negotiations ahead, and 100,000 people disenfranchised because they did not understand how to vote.
??The UK government refused Opposition demands to tighten up on the handling of ballot papers and postal votes. The government?? now has to live through allegations of people tampering with the ballot and rigging the postal votes.
No-one can be sure that the SNP should be the largest party in the Parliament. No-one can be sure that the SNP’s margin of victory should have been so narrow. 100,000 missing votes when only 2 million people voted is a collosal number which could have had a big impact on the result, to say nothing of possible meddling with ballots and postal votes as well.
??The government has debased so many of our institutions. Just a few weeks ago it made our Navy look ridiculous by the way it handled the media after the hostage crisis. Today it shows the UK, with the Mother of Parliaments, once a beacon of democracy to the world, unable to hold an election properly in just one small part of the UK’s electorate.
??
What should be done?
1. An urgent enquiry by independent people to find out if it is likely the will of the Scottish people was thwarted by the voting muddle.
2. A statement by the government on how it intends to put this right.
3. A promise from the government that in future anyone wanting a postal vote on a permanent basis will need to establish their identity, address and entitlement to a vote and leave a way of ensuring security and identification when the vote is sent back.
4. An end to proportional representation in UK elections, returning to the clear idea of a cross to record a vote for a candidate on the first past the post basis.
5. Police enquiries into all serious allegations of vote rigging.
John Redwood has been the Member of Parliament for Wokingham since 1987. First attending Kent College, Canterbury, he graduated from Magdalen College...
There is only one solution, a visit to a poling station and a purple finger.
Returning officers and their agents should drink Ribena the week before polling.
[Reply]
You say three voting systems, yes technically, but in practice it was really just two. Council - 1,2,3 etc, and parliament - one X for each vote.
“The result was chaos - no winner, endless negotiations ahead” That did not lead from the fact that “three” different types of voting systems were used. It prevailed because of STV/list as opposed to FPtP, yes - however that alone does not make it wrong to use STV/list system. This system has favoured the tories in Scotland (as opposed to a FPtP system), has it not? You obviously favour FPtP elections, as do I, but playing devils advocate: FPtP can deliver governments with large majorities, as we have seen in the last 10 years at Westminster, however a large majority does not necessarily mean a healthy democracy; bad legislation can be forced through parliament. Yes, FPtP is great when you are in power, but not so great when not in power.
No one was disenfranchised, yes, there should have been a lot more publicity around the voting procedure, but it is surely the responsibility of the individual to educate themselves the correct procedure and process for how to vote? Anyone who educated themselves could vote. Yes, it should have been made easier and clearer (and the council elections shouldn’t have been on the same day), but people were NOT disenfranchised.
As for postal voting, yes, tighter control needs to be put in place, but it needs to be carefully thought through. There were large problems in the Scottish elections whereby postal votes were not sent out in time because of the problems with introducing the new rules (the signature etc).
[Reply]
The biggest problem from what I’m hearing is that the two parts of the Parliament vote were on the same ballot paper. Labour people planned this because they were worried that people were developing the (correct!) notion that they could vote for one party in the constituency and another party in the region.
I still favour PR because if it had been a purely FPTP election in Scotland, there would have been a grossly unfair result last Thursday. Labour would have had an overall majority (albeit of one) with a 30% share and significantly less votes than the SNP.
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