The Daily Echo 10 May 07

Written by Sandra Gidley MP on Thu 10th May 2007

The post election analysis was, at a national level, dominated by the situation in Scotland. The Scottish National Party had actually received the vote that the polls had predicted and there was also speculation about potential coalitions. But, the real news story centred around the number of spoilt ballot papers. In some cases the number of spoilt papers was greater than the winning candidates majority so all of a sudden we found ourselves faced with a "hanging chad" type scenario of our own.

We are used to seeing spoilt ballot papers. They usually have all candidates ticked or obscenities written across them - although I am aware of a candidate who saw the words "get married" written by his name. This had such an effect on him that he later proposed to his live in partner.

Unfortunately, the situation in Scotland was not caused by people with a sense of humour or disillusionment in the political system. The problems were caused because Scotland introduced a new voting system and people, quite simply, didn't understand it.

Overall approximately 142,000 ballot papers were rejected. Some have blamed this on the fact that Scotland had an election based on a proportional representation system but this is not the first time that Scotland has had such an election. Much of the confusion seems to have been caused because voters were asked for the first time to enter their choice for both the regional list and for their constituency on a single ballot paper.

The chaos was multiplied by a separate ballot paper for the local authority elections which used yet another system and asked voters to use numbers to indicate their preference rather than a cross.

The whole thing has descended into farce and has resulted in legal challenge.

As a Liberal Democrat you would expect me to be in favour of proportional representation because it is a fairer system which would result in my party securing a number of seats more closely related to the total vote cast for my party.

The results in Scotland do not change this belief but what is crystal clear is that it is not fair on the public to expect them to vote in different elections, on the same day, in different ways. The Government needs to decide on a suitable PR system and stick with it but the current hotch potch of election systems leads me to one conclusion - that the Government actually has no real interest in permanently introducing a fairer electoral system.

Published with kind permission of the Daily Echo

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Previous press article: Romsey Advertiser 4 May 07 (Fri 4th May 2007).
Next press article: Romsey Advertiser 11 May 07 (Fri 11th May 2007).

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