By Richard Wood
New Zealand’s Independent Electoral Review has put forward recommendations to reform the country’s electoral system, strengthening the case for a full review of the Scottish Parliament’s voting system.
Both Scotland and New Zealand use similar Mixed-Member voting systems to elect representatives. Each system has mix of parliamentarians voted in on lists and those elected in single-member constituencies. The number of single-member constituencies won by each party is taken into account when list seats are allocated to ensure broadly proportional outcomes.
The Scottish and New Zealand systems have further similarities, as well as some significant differences, which can be read about below.
SEE MORE: New Zealand and Scotland: similar but imperfect voting systems
The Scottish Parliament is significantly more representative than the House of Commons in Westminster, which uses FPTP. However, its voting system has some notable flaws that should be addressed.
The review of the similar system in New Zealand shows that a review could happen at Holyrood too. The non-binding New Zealand review covered various aspects of election law including a referendum on extending parliamentary terms from three to four years (something that has strong logic but has been rejected twice already), election financing rules and lowering the voting age to 16 (which is the case in Scotland).
On the voting system specifically, they came up with the following recommendations:
R6. Lowering the party vote threshold for list seat eligibility from five per cent of the nationwide party vote to 3.5 per cent.
R7. Abolishing the one-electorate seat threshold, provided the party vote threshold is lowered.
R8. Removing the existing provision for extra seats to compensate for
overhang seats, with fewer list seats allocated instead, if the one-
electorate seat threshold is abolished, as recommended.Independent Electoral Review (2023)
R9. Fixing the ratio of electorate seats to list seats at 60:40, requiring
parliament to be an uneven number, and allowing the size of parliament to grow in line with the population.
The outcome of the review addresses some key issues but some of its thinking has flaws. For instance, increasing the number of constituency seats so there are more of them than list seats will weaken proportionality.
SEE MORE: 12 reasons why the UK needs Proportional Representation now
Nonetheless, it shows that a review is possible in Scotland. After almost 25 years of devolution, it’s time for an upgrade. Any review of Scotland’s voting system should consider the following aspects:
- The Electoral system.
- Parliamentary term lengths.
- Dual mandates.
- Second jobs.
- Recall options.
- Ballot access.
- More MSPs
On the electoral system, any reform should look at the flaws of the Additional Member System used to elect MSPs.
AMS is only partially proportional. A majority of seats are elected via FPTP and the proportional list seats are allocated on a regional basis leading to only regional proportionality and a risk of overhangs with no mechanism to correct them. Furthermore, the FPTP constituencies as an integral (and majority) part of AMS result in safe seats, retain a major drawback of FPTP.
There’s also the two-vote problem – having two types of votes can lead to divergence between constituency and list votes cast, messing with the ended outcome of proportionality. As part of that, the system can be gamed: although unsuccessful, in 2021 Alba tried to game the list vote to create a supermajority for independence, going against the spirit of a system designed to represent as many views as possible – as accurately as possible. This is compounded by the fact that there are two types of MSP, constituency and list, which while in theory have the same roles in practice can be rather different.
Of course, One solution would be to make modifications to AMS to address these concerns, similar to the level of reforms being proposed in New Zealand, however, bolder reforms should also be considered. The Scottish Parliament needs a system like the Single Transferable Vote to empower voters, deliver better proportionality and end the two vote/MSP problem.
The full New Zealand Independent Electoral Review can be read here.
SEE MORE: 7 reforms to improve the Scottish Parliament
Image source: Pixabay
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