The Scottish Liberal Democrats are the last of Scotland’s six main parties to publish their manifesto ahead of elections on Thursday 7 May.
Their plans for Scotland were announced on Friday 17 April, one day after the SNP published their own document.
Overall, the Scottish Lib Dems have some promising policies in their manifesto on the issues of democratic and electoral reform.
Changing the Additional Member System
The Scottish Liberal Democrats are the only one of the six main parties to have explicitly committed to replacing Holyrood’s Additional Member System with a fairer alternative, in this case the Single Transferable Vote.
Scotland is on track for its least representative election ever, yet other parties have failed to grasp the seriousness of this. If designed well, STV would improve proportionality and, crucially, strengthen voter power over individual candidates up for election.
An eye-catching proposal is Alex Cole-Hamilton’s plan for an Accountability Act, which would improve ministerial accountability and introduce a recall rule for MSPs.
The Scottish Lib Dems have also pledged to protect drovlution by removing the ability of the UK Parliament to unilaterally change the powers of devolved parliaments.
There are also proposals to reform Quangos, implement a federal, written constitution, and devolve power to local communities.
The Scottish Greens launched their manifesto on Tuesday 14 April, just shy of three weeks before the election in May. The party are hoping for their best ever Holyrood election result and made those intentions clear at their launch in Glasgow.
My first thought looking at the manifesto was how the title stands out as being very familiar. If you’ve had the same thought it’s because it’s rather reminiscent of a previous Liberal Democrat slogan “demand better”.
The Scottish Lib Dem manifesto is due on Friday while the SNP are expected to publish theirs on Thursday.
This follows Reform, the Scottish Conservatives and Scottish Labour who have all published their plans.
Independence and democracy
Unsurprisingly, the Greens reaffirm their commitment to independence, linking it with their wider policies on democracy in one clear section. Notably the party doesn’t even mention a referendum but calls for the devolution of foreign affairs.
Positive steps to improve Scottish democracy include a proposals for a Trust and Transparency Strategy and the introduction of a recall rule for MSPs.
The ending of cash deposits for election candidates is also welcome as that would democratise Scotland’s nominations process. Automatic voter registration is also a good inclusion, highlighting the absurdity that such a system isn’t already in place.
The manifesto also has a dedicated section on local democracy.
One eye-catching proposal is the move towards making councillors a full-time position. That is something which needs a lot more thinking and financing to make it feasible.
The party also wants to reform the way vacancies are filled when councillors resign from their position. There’s a lack of detail here, but the obvious alternative to disruptive and non-representative by-elections is co-option. However, any co-option proposals would need to have strong democratic safeguards.
Disappointingly, the party lacks any commitment to replace Scotland’s failing Additional Member System.
Their 2021 manifesto also lacked such a commitment while their 2016 document committed them to the Single Transferable Vote.
The party did however outline it’s support for Proportional Representation at all levels of governance in the 2024 UK General Election.
But that all said, it’s striking that there are no proposals to reform Holyrood’s Additional Member System as we hurtle towards what’s likely to be Scotland’s most disproportional election ever.
Voters in Scotland are going to the polls on Thursday 7 May 2026 to elect 129 MSPs.
Here’s how the Scotland’s Additional Member System works.
First Past the Post seats
Scotland is divided into 73 constituencies elected via First Past the Post. In this system, you get one vote for candidates in your constituency. The candidate with the most votes in each constituency wins the seat to become the constituency MSP.
On these seats alone, the share of votes cast for each party across Scotland are unlikely to match up with the proportion of seats won. To address this disproportionality, that’s where the other 56 seats come into play.
The country is also divided into eight regions each electing eight MSPs.
With this, you also get another ballot where you vote for a party of your choice. This party list element adds an element of proportionality to the Scottish Parliament so seats broadly match votes (although it’s worth highlighting that the system has proportionality problems that risk being on full display this May).
The allocation of party list seats is determined by list votes cast per party while also taking into account of constituency seats won by each party so seats roughly match votes over all.
If a party does wins lots of constituency seats in a region, they are unlikely to pick up many list seats. This has been the case for the SNP and Scottish Lib Dems in recent years. Similarly, if a party does well on the list ballot but not in constituencies, such as the Scottish Greens, then they will pick up list seats.
The final poll to be published this March suggests the SNP are on track to coming close to winning a majority of seats — on a vote share that doesn’t reflect their projected seat share at all.
The new Survation poll (data collected 16 – 23 March) gives the SNP 35% (constituency) and 32% (list) of the vote. Projections, including from Ballot Box Scotland, suggest this would give the SNP 62 seats. That’s three seats short of a majority and 48% of seats.
That mismatch of seats and votes is shocking, and doesn’t reflect the founding principle of proportionality underpinning the establishment of the Scottish Parliament.
The next Scottish Parliament must address this broken link between seats and votes.
This divergence of seats and votes is driven by the imbalance of constituency and list seats in the Scottish Parliament. 73 out of the 129 seats are elected via First Past the Post, meaning that a party can do well winning lots of these even if their vote share doesn’t reflect their success in winning seats. This is compounded by the limited number of list seats available, meaning other parties can’t be compensated for the SNP winning more seats via constituencies than they would be entitled to if all seats were allocated proportionality.
With the election campaign now underway, there’s a very real chance the polls could change. But as things stand, Holyrood is on track for the most unrepresentative Parliament in its history.
The next Scottish Parliament must review its voting system and commit to reform in order to improve proportionality and voter power over candidates. This poll highlights another reason to address the Additional Member System’s flaws and upgrade Scottish democracy.
The Scottish Parliament’s Additional Member System is significantly more representative than Westminster’s First Past the Post electoral system. But AMS has significant flaws that need to be addressed.
Recent polls suggest that the SNP could win close to a majority of seats – or possibly a majority – on far less than a majority of votes.
This is largely down to the imbalance of constituency seats to list seats alongside one party, in this case the SNP, doing significantly better than other parties across Scottish constituencies.
Since the advent of devolution in 1999, there have been 73 constituency seats to 56 list seats. This means that one party could theoretically win a majority of seats on constituency seats only.
Such an outcome is possible in 7 May 2026, according to recent polling.
Modifying the Additional Member System
One way to address this would be to reform AMS (although it’s worth noting the system has wider flaws that would still persist).
This could involve the introduction of levelling seats if seats don’t match votes. Or else adding two MSPs to each region, creating a more 50-50 sit of constituency and list MSPs.
Alternatively, the number of constituency seats could be cut and replaced by list MSPs. This is an option if decision-makers are wedded to 129 MSPs.
Alternatively, it is worth considering other voting systems. Introducing the Single Transferable Vote, if designed well, could improve proportionality while also empowering voters and giving them the option to vote across different parties.
A more radical alternative would be to introduce an Open List system Proportional Representation with levelling seats to maximise proportionality.
The seventh Scottish Parliament must fix the voting system
So far, Holyrood election results have been broadly proportional. But the 2026 election risks exposes a major problem with the Additional Member System, namely the First Past the Post element.
Concern is growing ahead of the 2026 election that the result after 7 May will be the most unrepresentative Scottish Parliament vote ever.
Proportionality was one of the founding principles of the design of Scotland’s Additional Member System. It’s not perfect, but since 1999 seats have broadly matched votes. Now, due to a combination of the imbalance of constituency to list seats (73 to 56) and one party expected to do well in constituencies despite falling well short of a majority of the constituency vote, the next Scottish Parliament is likely to fall well short of the proportional standards expected.
Are MSPs able to abolish the Additional Member System?
If election projections come true, the next parliament must seize the moment and find consensus to fix Holyrood’s creaking voting system.
The way to do this is through a Bill passed with a supermajority in Holyrood. That’s two-thirds of MSPs. Therefore any change requires broad consensus from multiple parties to meet the magic number of 86 MSPs.
The possibility of electoral reform in Scotland depends on what happens after the election. The bigger the disproportionality, the more pressure there will be on MSPs and ministers to act.
The SNP, Lib Dems and Scottish Greens all support Proportional Representation. And together, they are likely to have a two-thirds majority, but finding agreement on the type of reform will be the challenge – not to mention conflicts in the SNP about maintaining the status-quo for their own advantage versus their commendable party stance on the issue.
There are certainly issues needing ironed out. But there is precedent for this in the devolution era. In Wales, Labour and Plaid Cymru came together to abolish the Additional Member System ahead of their own 2026 vote, and in Scotland, the Lib Dems convinced their coalition partners Labour to introduce STV for Scottish local government.
Holyrood is turning 30 in the next parliament. It’s time to review Scotland’s democratic foundations and reform the voting system once and for all.
A new poll suggests that the Scottish Parliament is on track for a highly unrepresentative election despite Holyrood’s supposedly proportional voting system.
The Ipsos Scotland Political Pulse poll for STV puts the SNP first in terms of list votes, constituency votes and projected seats.
Party
Constituency %
List vote %
SNP
36%
26%
Labour
20%
19%
Green
7%
16%
Reform UK
19%
14%
Conservatives
9%
11%
Lib Dems
10%
10%
In a properly proportional system, seats should broadly match votes cast. But seat projections for this poll indicate a staggering mismatch between seats and votes.
Party
Seat count
Seat %
SNP
60
46.5%
Labour
20
15.5%
Green
16
12.4%
Reform
13
10.1%
Conservatives
10
7.8%
Lib Dems
10
7.8%
The biggest divergence between seats and votes here is with the SNP. Support for the party has fallen dramatically to 26% of list votes and 36% of seats. But projections indicate they are on track for 60 seats – almost half of those available.
The main driver behind this mismatch is driven by the dominance of First Past the Post seats used in Scotland’s Additional Member System, an imbalanced ratio of 73 to 56. This makes it theoretically possible for a party to win a majority on constituency seats alone.
The SNP is doing better than other competitive parties on the constituency ballot, and due to their success, they are on track to win the vast majority of constituency seats and close to a majority of seats overall.
The SNP is set to win more seats than they are entitled to if Holyrood had a mechanism to address parties winning more seats than they proportionally should on the constituency vote. In fact, Ballot Box Scotland estimates that the poll puts them on a staggering 22 seats more than what they should win if seats were determined by the proportional ballot alone in different Scottish regions.
Every now and again someone suggests introducing term limits for list MSPs. The argument being that lost MSPs are supposedly not elected by voters unlike their constituency counterparts.
However, list systems are normal in the democratic world and it is valid for someone to be elected as part of a list. When someone votes on the party list, they aren’t just blindly voting for said party, they are backing a slate of candidates.
That said, while term limits aren’t the answer, AMS lists aren’t perfect.
The real problem with the list element at Holyrood is two-fold.
First of all lists are closed, meaning voters have no say over what order candidates are ranked in. Tinkering with AMS is one option to improve Holyrood by introducing an open list element as part of the voting process. This is is used in Bavaria’s similar MMP system to empower voters at the ballot box.
But that only takes you so far. The second problem is the two-tier nature of MSPs. Having constituency and list MSPs creates a two-tier system. While in theory the two types of MSPs have the same jobs, this isn’t always the case in practice. Furthermore, it ends up creating attitudes that list MSPs aren’t real MSPs.
Instead of tinkering with AMS, although opening up lists would be a welcome step, Holyrood’s electoral system needs a major overhaul.
AMS provides broadly proportional parliaments but there is significant room for improvement. Switching to the Single Transferable Vote would end the two-tired element, strengthen proportionality (if designed fairly), and empower voters to rank candidates. An open list system where parties are ranked preferentially, and voters can vote for individual candidates within parties is also an alternative.
The Scottish Parliament is now over a quarter of a century old. AMS has done well to ensure that what happens in the ballot box leads to representative outcomes but there are fairer alternatives. The next Scottish Government and Parliament should address the democratic deficits at Holyrood to upgrade Scottish democracy for the next 25 Years and beyond.
Next year marks 25 years of devolution following the re-establishment of the Scottish Parliament in 1999. After some bumps along the way, the Scottish Parliament is undeniably a success story. However, while its use of a broadly proportional voting system makes it more representative than the parliament in Westminster (what with FPTP in the Commons and the continued existence of the House of Lords), the Scottish Parliament needs reform. Put simply, Holyrood needs an upgrade.
Upgrade Holyrood champions better democracy in Scotland. With next year marking a quarter of a century of devolution, it will be the perfect time to reflect, assess and improve upon the democratic mechanisms of the Scottish Parliament.
First things first, Scotland’s voting system sounds great at first glance but there is significant room for improvement. The Additional Member System (AMS) ensures broad proportionality but only goes so far as having a mechanism for regional proportionality. What’s more it fails to address overhangs, retains single-member districts and leaves open the possibility for parties to “game the system” as seen with Alba’s failed attempt to win a “supermajority” for independence at the 2021 Scottish Parliament election. Furthermore, voters still have limited powers over individual candidates.
The system is significantly more proportional than First Past the Post but alternatives do exist – and those alternatives must be examined and adopted. There are three likely routes that the Scottish Parliament could take on this issue: AMS with modifications, Open List PR or the Single Transferable Vote.
Tinkering around the edges by adopting a German style mixed-member voting system to address overhangs and ensure national party proportionality would be a minor improvement but it would cause some headaches of it’s own – Germany’s Bundestag is growing with each election. The Scottish public are likely to be approving of significantly more politicians. What’s more such a system would retain single-member constituencies.
Open List PR with levelling seats – as in Denmark, Sweden or Iceland – this would improve proportionality, give voters power over individual candidates and crucially end single-member districts. This would be one option for the Scottish Parliament that’s worth considering. If we were to go down this route then we would to ensure that any lists are regional, open for voters to enhance their power and have levelling seats to ensure both regional and national proportional representation.
The final alternative is often seen as the gold-standard voting system (if implemented properly) – the Single Transferable Vote. Already used to elect councillors in Scotland, STV would provide proportionality (depending on district sizes), give voters an enormous amount of power at elections and provide voters with multi-party representation. What’s more, the system is backed by the SNP, Lib Dems, as well as some Labour and Conservative MSPs. The Scottish Greens recently supported it before backing Open List PR.
The Scottish Parliament must therefore examine its voting system in any 25-year review of devolution.
But it’s not just the electoral system where the Scottish Parliament needs improvements.
Holyrood needs to end dual mandates – primarily for joint MSP-MPs and MSP-Lords but also place restrictions on MSP-councillors. Dual mandates are unfair on voters who deserve fully-committed representatives. On top of that, there also needs to be a restriction on second jobs for MSPs, again for similar reasons.
We also need a return to four-year parliamentary terms. It’s right that election terms are fixed – as they give a level playing field to all parties and candidates – but five-year terms are too long and are only something the Scottish Parliament slipped into during the last decade as a result of Westminster’s very brief adoption of fixed five-year terms.
What’s more, the Scottish Parliament also needs a recall rule. Holyrood is ahead of Westminster on many fronts but the lack of ability for constituents to recall MSPs is a major flaw. In practice this will be difficult to achieve due to the mixed-member system and by-election blueprint for recalls at Westminster but any review of the functioning of the Scottish Parliament should include a reform of this nature.
2024 will be a milestone year for Scotland – 25 years of devolution have undoubtedly changed the Scottish political landscape forever.
Devolution works and what’s more it works well. This should be celebrated. But with that success comes room for improvement. There will be time to take stock next year and assess a way to move forward on these reforms – hopefully with cross-party support. It’s time to upgrade Holyrood.
Sweden went to the polls on Sunday 11 September 2022, four years after the previous vote in 2018. The country uses a system of Proportional Representation to elect members of the Riksdag, ensuring that how Swedes vote at the ballot box is reflected in parliament.
The country’s electoral system is worth exploring as an alternative to Holyrood’s broadly proportional but flawed Additional Member System.
What electoral system does Sweden use?
Sweden uses a system of Open List Proportional Representation with levelling seats to ensure national proportionality.
The country is divided into 29 constituencies – ranging from 2 to 43 members (Gotland and Stockholm county respectively) – to which parties present lists of candidates in each constituency. Voters get to vote for one party but also have the option to vote for individual candidates, which can alter the list ordering within their constituency. This is the open element of the system, thus further empowering voters at the ballot box.
Elections in Sweden are extremely proportional due to larger multi-member constituencies, however, what sets the country’s system apart from country’s such as Estonia and Latvia which use list PR systems, is that Sweden’s electoral system also employs levelling seats. Once all the votes are counted and seats distributed as per the voters’ wishes, parties win additional seats across the country to ensure that the overall results are as proportional as possible. Of the 349 seats in the Riksdag, 310 are distributed in the first instance while a further 39 are distributed to further improve proportionality. There is also a 4% national threshold for parties to enter the Riksdag. Sweden is not unique in this regard; Norway, Denmark and Iceland also have levelling seats to ensure proportionality overall.
How did Sweden vote at the 2022 election and how proportional was it?
The previous Swedish general election took place in 2018, which was followed by tough negotiations and even a no confidence vote in Prime Minister Stefan Löfven. However, Löfven emerged to lead a minority left coalition made up of his own party the Social Democrats, as well as the Greens. Löfven resigned in 2021, making way for party colleague Magdalena Andersson, who led her party into the 2022 election.
The most recent election was an incredibly close-run contest between the left and right blocs. On the left, the Social Democrats maintained their dominant position as the largest party in parliament. however, right of centre parties managed to win a very slim majority of seats, leading to Magdalena Andersson’s resignation on Thursday. The far-right Sweden Democrats replaced the centre-right Moderates as the second largest party in parliament but the Moderate leader is likely to become prime minister due to the toxicity of the Sweden Democrats even amongst the rest of the right. What influence they will have this parliament – and in the years to come – remains to be seen.
But how proportional was the 2022 election? Thanks to Sweden’s Open List PR system, the answer is very.
The Social Democrats for example won 107 seats (30.7%) on 30.4% of the vote. The Sweden Democrats took 73 seats (20.9%) on 20.5% of the vote while the Moderates won 68 seats (19.5%) on 19.5% of the vote. Overall, results were extremely proportional with seats reflecting votes. Furthermore, voters were empowered by the open element of the allowing them to express support for individuals within their chosen party.
Swedish Election Result (6,568 out of 6,578 Districts Counted):
Social Democrats: 107 (+3) Sweden Democrats: 73 (+11) Moderate: 68 (-2) Centre: 24 (-7) Left: 24 (-4) Christian Democrats: 19 (-4) Green: 18 (+2) Liberal: 16% (-4)
How do the Swedish and Scottish electoral systems compare?
The Scottish Parliament’s broadly proportional Additional Member System (AMS) is significantly fairer than the unrepresentative First Past the Post voting system used for the House of Commons. However, it has a number of flaws that need to be addressed. Problems associated with Holyrood’s mixed-member system are listed below:
1. Regional not national PR – As list members are distributed on a regional basis only, there is no mechanism to ensure overall nationality proportionality. While regional proportionality tends to result in broadly proportional outcomes overall, there is still room for improvement.
2. Limited voter power – Under AMS voters have no power over the ordering of party lists. Furthermore, the constituency vote element limits voter power by creating safe seats and targeted marginal seats while also being “lists of one”.
3. Two types of MSPs – Due to the nature of mixed-member systems, the Scottish Parliament has two types of MSP. While in theory they perform the same functions, this can vary in practice, particularly on the casework side of things.
4. The two-vote problem – Voters have two votes, and while they should ideally work in tandem to result in proportional outcomes, it creates the opportunities for parties to exploit this by only standing in the list and asking established parties’ supporters to back them on the list. This was highlighted when Alba was established with the express intention to do this in 2021. This clearly goes against the spirit of AMS and could create highly disproportionate elections.
5. Constituency seats remain (and dominate!) – Single-member constituencies still come with many of the flaws they have in FPTP. They result in wasted votes and can lead to safe seats, as well as marginal seats which can result in parties focusing on them rather than giving attention to the wider region or country. Furthermore, the fact that constituency seats make up a significant majority of seats in the Scottish Parliament, this can result in overhangs (which aren’t addressed by AMS) and skew overall proportionality – particularly if one party dominates single-member seats.
Upgrade Holyrood is committed to making the case for improving Scotland’s democracy, and that includes arguing for a review of the current system and outlining alternatives. The type of system used for Swedish elections – an Open List PR system with levelling seats – is one option that would address many of the faults of AMS.
Levelling seats would rectify the problem of limited national proportionality. And while there would technically be two types of MSP, under a Swedish model, these are given back to constituencies, minimising that problem to a minimum. Furthermore, voters would only have one party vote, ending the two vote problem, and single-seat constituencies would come to an end. Voters would also be empowered by being able to influence party lists unlike under AMS where parties present unalterable lists.
But what would such a system look like in practice?
Ballot Box Scotland is a strong advocate of Holyrood adopting an Open List PR system (with levelling seats), which they categorise as Scandinavian-style PR. For those wondering what Holyrood would look like if it adopted a system like Sweden, BBS has designed such a model for Scotland and used the most recent Scottish Parliament election results to give an indication of what seat distribution would look like.
This is shown below. Of course, it’s worth noting that the size of any constituencies in such a system if it were to be adopted would be up to the designers so it wouldn’t necessarily reflect the below. Furthermore, in terms of seat projections, the below uses the regional vote to determine how people would cast their singular Open List PR vote. In reality, many who voted ‘SNP constituency and Green regional’ might instead have use their one vote for the SNP although this is all speculation of course. In addition, the type of voting system used very much determines how people vote and so how people may have voted under this system could be completely different (e.g. smaller parties may be more considered).
Final Large Change: Abolish all trace of current model, introduce Scandinavian Style PR! https://t.co/1Vj8klBW7h
SNP ~ 55 (-9) Conservative ~ 32 (+1) Labour ~ 24 (+2) Green ~ 11 (+3) Lib Dem ~ 7 (+3)
— Ballot Box Scotland (@BallotBoxScot) June 3, 2021
So, what support is there for a Swedish-style system among Scottish parties? The Scottish Greens support a Scandinavian-style system while the Lib Dems favour the Single Transferable Vote (which again would be better than AMS if designed effectively), as do the SNP while Labour and the Conservatives are largely missing from this debate (although figures such as Labour’s Paul Sweeney MSP recognise the faults of the current system).
That all said, a Sweden-like system is not the only alternative to the current set-up at Holyrood. Two other alternatives would be the Single Transferable Vote (which would address many of AMS’ problems, ensure proportionality and vastly improve voter choice and power) and a modified mixed-member system with open lists and guaranteed overall proportionality (similar to Bavaria’s electoral system).
Sweden’s election provides just one model that Holyrood – and perhaps Westminster (although that seems far less likely and possibly undesirable for such a large populous) – could adopt to improve electoral outcomes. Reform is needed, and to achieve change it is vital that we look to other parliaments for guidance.
Upgrade Holyrood 