Saturday, April 28, 2007
Elections to the Scottish Parliament and the National Assembly for Wales
Voters in Scotland and Wales will be heading to the polls next Thursday, May 3 to choose members of their respective devolved legislatures. Elections to the Scottish Parliament and the National Assembly for Wales has an overview of the Additional Member System (AMS) of proportional representation (PR) introduced in 1999 to elect both assemblies (the first legislative bodies in Great Britain proper to be elected by PR), with 1999 and 2003 election results.Scottish voters will also choose members of 32 local councils. Under the terms of the Local Governance (Scotland) Act of 2004, councillors will be elected by the Single Transferable Vote (STV) system of proportional representation. Elections in Northern Ireland have been carried out by STV since 1973 (where it was previously used in 1921-29), but the 2007 Scottish local government elections will be the first universal suffrage contests in Great Britain proper to be held under this system, which is also used in Ireland since 1921.
In fact, Scotland now has four different electoral systems in operation, namely: first-past-the-post (FPTP) voting for elections to the U.K. House of Commons; AMS for elections to the Scottish Parliament; STV for local government elections; and closed list proportional representation for European Parliament elections.
In Wales, the National Assembly election will take place under recently revised constituency boundaries. Professors Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher of the University of Plymouth have estimated that if the 2003 election had been carried out under the new boundaries, the Labour Party would have lost one constituency seat (Aberconwy) to the nationalist Plaid Cymru (PC; Party of Wales), but in turn the latter would have lost a seat in the North Wales region to the Conservatives. In all, Labour would have lost a seat to the Conservative Party, and would have ended up with less than half the seats in the National Assembly.
Local government elections will also be taking place in 312 local authorities in England.
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Although the 2007 local government elections will be the first "universal suffrage" contests to use STV in Great Britain, STV has been used previously for public elections in Scotland. STV was used to elect the Scottish Education Authorities in four elections in 1919, 1922, 1925 and 1928. Although these were special purpose authorities, concerned only with school education, voting was open to all then registered electors, i.e. men, and women aged over 30 subject to certain property restrictions.
Although not the first to legislate for it, Scotland will be the first country to use STV counting rules based on the Weighted Inclusive Gregory Method of transfering surplus votes. A link to a detailed description of the counting procedure and to the election rules can be found at:
http://www.mcdougall.org.uk/VM/RESOURCE.HTM (item 5 under General).
James Gilmour
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Although not the first to legislate for it, Scotland will be the first country to use STV counting rules based on the Weighted Inclusive Gregory Method of transfering surplus votes. A link to a detailed description of the counting procedure and to the election rules can be found at:
http://www.mcdougall.org.uk/VM/RESOURCE.HTM (item 5 under General).
James Gilmour
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