Tag: Electoral Reform Society

Strengthening local democracy: Have your say

Second phase of Democracy Matters ‘national conversation’

People across Scotland are being asked to suggest ways of increasing local control over decision-making.

The second phase of the Democracy Matters national conversation will give people the opportunity to come together in their communities to imagine how new and inclusive democratic processes can best help their town, village or neighbourhood.

Community groups can guide local discussions by using the consultation document which covers a variety of themes including powers, representation, accountability and participation. People previously said it was crucial to get these things right. Funding is available to help with the costs of hosting events.

To mark the start of the second phase, Community Wealth Minister Tom Arthur and Local Government Empowerment Minister Joe FitzPatrick visited the Linlithgow Community Development Trust.

Mr Arthur said: “The Scottish Government is encouraging people across the country to come together and talk about local involvement in our democratic processes. We believe more decisions should be taken locally to better reflect the aspirations of our diverse communities.

“More than 4,000 people took part in the first phase of Democracy Matters. By providing financial support, we hope to make local conversations during the second phase as welcoming as possible. We want to hear even more voices as we work together to improve the way democracy works for our local communities.”

COSLA President Shona Morrison said: “COSLA welcomes the launch of the second phase of Democracy Matters; it marks a renewed resolve to put local people and communities at the centre of local decision-making.

“By drawing on the experiences gained by local communities during and since the Covid-19 pandemic we hope to secure a clear, updated understanding of how new models of local democracy can transform the lives of people in communities across Scotland.

“I would encourage everyone to contribute to the conversations which will be taking place across Scotland during the next few months as we ask what models of democratic framework would work best for them.”

Electoral Reform Society Scotland Director Willie Sullivan said: “Communities are made and good places to live are created when people work with each other to run their city, island, town or village. Scotland is the sum of these places, and our democracy depends on how well we run them together.

“In that light, it’s very important to restart Democracy Matters to ask local communities what sort of local democratic framework might make this possible.”

Mandatory voter ID will make it harder for millions of ordinary people to vote

Electoral Reform Society: Stop plans for Voter ID

The government have just announced in the Queen’s Speech that they will legislate to make it harder for millions of ordinary people to vote.

Demanding ID at the doors of every polling station is a solution in search of a problem. Voting is safe and secure in the UK, meaning this policy is just an unnecessary barrier to democratic participation. Ministers need to listen to these concerns and drop these costly plans.

URGENT: Sign and share today →

At a cost of up to £20m per election, mandatory ID is an expensive distraction and the wrong priority right now. These proposals should be dropped before they damage political equality in the UK.

3.5 million people lack photo ID in this country. These proposals will make it harder to vote for huge numbers of voters, locking ordinary people out of our democracy and unfairly discriminating against those who lack ID. 

Rather than inventing problems, the government should focus on the real issues in politics – including the nine million people missing from the electoral roll, and the glaring loopholes in our lobbying laws.

Groups representing millions of people – from homelessness charities, pensioners’ groups, LGBT+ campaigners and civil liberties activists – are sounding the alarm about these plans. 

Sign the petition and urge ministers to listen. 


Best wishes,
Willie Sullivan,
Senior Director,
Electoral Reform Society

How Thursday’s elections for the Scottish Parliament will work

On 6 May voters across Scotland will be called to elect 129 members of the devolved Scottish Parliament for the sixth time in its history (writes Electoral Reform Society’s FEDERICO SCHOLARI).

The Scottish Parliament passes laws on crucial areas of local government, including health, education and transport- as well as some influence on tax and welfare benefits.

Anyone with a Scottish address, registered to vote and aged 16 and over is eligible to vote.

In 2015, Scotland championed the votes at 16 campaign by lowering the voting age to 16 to extend the franchise, allowing more than 100,000 young people to have their say in both parliamentary and local council elections.

Voting system

Elections for the Scottish Parliament employ the Additional Member System (AMS), which uses a mix of First Past the Post (FPTP) and Party List proportional representation.

73 constituency MSPs are elected from the Westminster-style FPTP ballot paper. The candidate with most votes is elected for each constituency, irrespective of vote share.

56 ‘list’ MSPs (the so-called additional members) are then added from a second ballot paper that includes a list of parties. Additional members are added based on the number of seats a party has won in the first ballot versus their overall vote share, in order to make parliament more proportional and match how voters preferences.

A proportional compromise?

The second ballot paper ensures greater representation, which compensates for the ailments of FPTP. The proportional element is intended to override any disproportionality created by the majoritarian nature of the constituency seats, providing a more proportional parliament while also keeping a single local MSP.

General Elections 2019 (FPTP) vs. Scottish Parliament Elections 2016 (AMS)

Our 2019 report on General Elections shone a light on those voters left voiceless due to disproportionate voting systems- with Scotland delivering some of the most disproportionate results across the UK for Westminster elections.

Under pure FPTP, the Scottish National Party performance was highly disproportionate, with a 22 percentage point increase in seats for an eight-point increase in votes. Some precarious victories occurred, with slim majorities in seats where more than two parties had substantial support.

Contrarily, the 2016 parliamentary elections saw the most proportional results to date under the AMS, which is a substantial improvement over pure FPTP. If the Scottish Parliament elections were conducted under FPTP we’d see one-party domination across Scotland with supporters of the other parties losing out.

Voting Intentions

The most recent polls show the SNP -currently in power- boasting a considerable lead over both Conservatives and Labour. The only notable change from the 2016 elections results sees the Greens gaining some ground over Lib Dems.

Differing areas of political debate include the potential for a new referendum for Scottish independence, post-pandemic economic recovery, climate change policies and more.

The Alba Party

There has been much talk of the launch of Alex Salmond’s pro-independence party, seen by many as an attempt to ‘game’ the AMS system to secure a disproportionate result in favour of pro-independence parties.

Alba, which is only contesting list seats, is pitching itself to pro-independence SNP voters who, due to the SNP’s dominance in the constituency seats, might see their list vote wasted.

But if Alba succeeded in this it’s not because they gamed the system but because enough voters supported them.  if a party is popular enough to pick up a decent level of support on the List vote and gain seats, like the Greens did in 2016 and look like doing again, then it isn’t really ‘gaming the system’. The system is designed to provide fair representation for supporters of parties who would not be properly represented under FPTP.

Polls show that it is far from certain that Alba will receive enough support to pick up List seats but ultimately that is a matter for the voters of Scotland to determine, one way or the other.

A more representative system

As Scottish voters prepare to go to the polls in May they can do so knowing that their vote will count and the parliament elected will be representative – a luxury most voters in England don’t have at this election.

And now, after 20 years of PR in Scotland surely it’s time Westminster caught up and ensured that voters in England could vote with the same peace of mind.

Political parties have become even more secretive about their online campaigning

Openness and transparency are the key foundations of any democracy. But today we find too much of our politics is shrouded in secrecy. Too often voters remain unsure about who is behind the messages they read, who is behind the information that shapes their political views, and ultimately their votes.  In no area is this truer than online campaigning (writes JESSICA BLAIR).

Nine months on from the general election, we still have little idea how much money was spent in the campaign. But even when the data is published by the Electoral Commission, huge gaps will remain in our understanding of how voters were targeted – and by whom.

Democracy is about empowering citizens so that they can actively take part in our political processes and make an informed decision at the ballot box. Transparency, fairness and accountability in political campaigning are key to ensuring this is possible. But while technology offers huge opportunities for political engagement, the current system – if it can be called that – is an unregulated Wild West.

Indeed, the Electoral Commission’s own post-election research found that ‘[m]isleading content and presentation techniques are undermining voters’ trust in election campaigns’ and that the ‘significant public concerns about the transparency of digital election campaigns risk overshadowing their benefits’.

Democracy in the Dark, a new report commissioned by the Electoral Reform Society and written by Dr Katharine Dommett and Dr Sam Power, sheds light on campaigning in the 2019 general election.

For the first time, the authors reveal how much was spent on social media platforms by campaigners and parties during the election, and track the rise of non-party ‘outriders’, with all the associated secrecy.

However, it’s not enough to just point out the risks. Dommett and Power also summarise the many sensible, proportionate and easily implementable recommendations, around which there is broad and cross-party consensus, as to how we can restore trust in our democratic processes.

These reforms would shine a light on the murky world of unregulated online campaigning, focusing on five key areas: 1. Money; 2. Non-party campaigns; 3. Targeting; 4. Data; 5. Misinformation.

Many of the recommendations in this report echo existing calls to modernise electoral law to help rebuild trust in our democratic system. Recommendations include closing funding loopholes, creating national standards for social media ad transparency and ensuring voters can easily see who is targeting them and why.

Since we published our report Reining in the Political Wild West in 2019, countless calls have been made across the political spectrum in support of reform and there continues to be strong and long-standing cross-party support to tame the unregulated Wild West of online political campaigning.

Yet despite repeated calls for reform, little action has been taken. Strikingly, far from becoming more transparent, the authors find that in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, parties and campaigners have become even more cautious about disclosing information about their campaign activities online.

In terms of progress, the most significant step has been the launch of a consultation on extending the use of imprints to include online election material – a necessary step, but which on its own is woefully insufficient.

Such limited efforts have further been undermined by alleged threats to abolish the Electoral Commission if it cannot be ‘radically overhauled’. Rather than enhancing the Commission’s powers and resources so that it can tackle the challenges of the modern age, the body tasked with protecting our democracy is under unprecedented attack.

With elections due to take place across the UK in May 2021, we cannot let the urgent task of ensuring our electoral integrity be kicked into the long grass once more.

Read the full report Democracy in the Dark

Voter ID risks ‘electoral gridlock’

Elections in the UK could grind to a halt if the government’s plans for voter ID go ahead, the Electoral Reform Society has warned.

Dr Jess Garland told Radio 4’s World at One that close results would be likely to be challenged if mandatory voter ID were rolled out nationally, due to voters being turned away for lacking ID. Continue reading Voter ID risks ‘electoral gridlock’

First steps towards a Citizens Assembly

The Scottish Government has proposed a Citizens’ Assembly on Scotland’s future, providing an opportunity for greater citizen engagement on issues facing the country. It’s early days, but an event in Edinburgh last week gave grounds for optimism. Continue reading First steps towards a Citizens Assembly

So, what IS a Citizens’ Assembly?

The Scottish Government has proposed a Citizens’ Assembly of Scotland, but what IS a citizens’ assembly? 

The University of Edinburgh and Electoral Reform Society Scotland have organised a panel discussion on Monday (July 8th) from 6pm – 8pm with speakers including:

  • Joanna Cherry MP QC (SNP Justice and Home Affairs spokesperson)
  • Dr Jess Garland (Electoral Reform Society)
  • Dr Oliver Escobar (University of Edinburgh)
  • Professor David Farrell (Research leader of the Irish Citizens’ Assembly)
  • Louise Caldwell (Irish Citizens’ Assembly member)
  • Lesley Riddoch (Journalist)
  • David Martin (Citizens’ Assembly Convener Designate)

The event has been incredibly popular, and is oversubscribed so we will be live streaming it at https://livestream.com/DemocracyTV/ers-citizens-assembly

We are collecting suggestions for questions for the panel. You can submit your questions here https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/M9WZCLN

Bookmark the link now and add the event to your calendar – don’t forget to tweet along with the stream with the hashtag #ShapingScotland

View the live stream link

Phil Connor,

Campaigns Officer,
ERS Scotland

Do Scots feel at home in a country dominated by one party?

SNP conference

A new report by Electoral Reform Society Scotland says that both Labour and the SNP have benefited from a “predominant-party problem” in Scotland, and calls for a range of radical political reforms to ‘transform our political culture‘. Continue reading Do Scots feel at home in a country dominated by one party?

Scotland: we have a problem?

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On Wednesday 20 April, Electoral Reform Society Scotland is hosting a free public discussion to coincide with the release of our new report One Party To Rule Them All: Does Scotland Have A Predominant-Party Problem?

The report addresses the dangers of one party dominance in a parliament designed for coalitions. This event will be a fantastic opportunity to explore what Scots want from our democracy and what we can do to help keep the Scottish parliament diverse and cooperative.

CLICK HERE FOR TICKETS

Speakers include:

  • Lesley Riddoch (journalist and commentator)
  • Angela Haggerty (editor of CommonSpace)
  • Rory Scothorne (ERS Scotland)
  • Compered by Gerry Hassan (writer and academic)

7pm – 8.30pm, Wednesday 20 April.

Blythswood Hall,
Renfield St Stephen’s Centre,
260 Bath St,
Glasgow, G2 4JP

Join the Facebook event and invite your friends here.

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