leyton.org

Scotland Votes looks like a great resource, and within a minute or two of discovering it, I managed to find the answer to a question that’s been bugging me since yesterday: Where are all the local council candidates? - My ward has 3 seats, but no internet presence of note from most of the candidates, and only one candidate appears to be standing from each of the main parties. They’re not contesting 2 of the 3 seats available. Why!?

Clicking through to the Local Elections page of ScotlandVotes.com, I came across this explanation:

Parties have worked out that to minimise the risk of splitting their vote, they should not stand more candidates in any seat than they can realistically expect to have elected. This means that in most three-member wards no party would field more than two candidates and most would field only one. The upshot of this tactical positioning by all the parties is that in May 2007 there will be fewer candidates than in previous elections, and ballot papers in many wards may only have one candidate from each party. This will, according to predictions, will remove vast swathes of Labour councillors from power across the country, and cause several councils to lose their Labour majorities

All makes sense when you look at it like that, and in many ways I’m pleased, but on the other hand I’m annoyed that it means we don’t necessarily get a fair say in the candidates that go forward if we simply don’t like what the others have to say. We vote for our first choice, and that’s it? It’s almost - but not quite - worse than before.

Of course, no voting system is perfect and this, by being more representative in general, means I am getting the diversity I’m so hoping for: Glasgow council has effectively been Labour since 1933 for instance, and this should ensure some alternative views are heard. But in Pollokshields having just one Labour, one SNP, one LibDem, one Tory, and one Green candidate leaves me feeling that the decision making process is somewhat flawed. A party list system would, perhaps, be a better system on a ward by ward basis, although that is much worse if you dislike the first choice candidate…

There was also a technical issue that rather disconcerted me and that was the issue of ‘Surplus’, which are the excess votes winning candidates get. The otherwise excellent votescotland.com website was a bit vague, but it seems that second preferences are carried over in proportion (in Northern Ireland’s version of the system), so I’m presuming it applies here too, rather than pulled off the top at random.

But am I the only person to feel that the electorate is being rather short-changed by this tactical play by the main parties?

Update 13/04/07: A look at the council candidates indicates this tactic is in use, and is going to result in a very different shape for the makeup of the next council.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 11th, 2007 at 9:16 pm and is filed under Glasgow, Politics, Scotland, Scottish elections. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.