Electoral reform: consultation analysis

Footnotes

1. http://www.gov.scot/Resource/0052/00529431.pdf

2. Note that the version of the questionnaire that could be downloaded from the Scottish Government website for completion and postal return did not include the tick-boxes.

3. Scottish elections 2007: An independent review of the Scottish Parliamentary and local government elections, 3 May 2007. Available at: https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/__data/assets/electoral_commission_pdf_file/0011/13223/Scottish-Election-Report-A-Final-For-Web.pdf

4. This would involve local councils and the Scottish Parliament having four-year terms, but with these scheduled to start (and end) at two-year intervals, e.g. the Scottish Parliament term would run from 2018 to 2022, while the term for councils would run from 2020 to 2024.

5. Scottish Parliament elections uses the Additional Member System (AMS) to elect 73 constituency MSPs and 56 MSPs who represent eight regions. Constituency MSPs are elected on a first past the post system. In electing regional MSPs, voters vote for a party, and MSPs are then elected from lists drawn up by political parties so that the final number of MSPs in each region is proportionate to the votes cast for each party. MSPs representing regions are often referred to as ‘list’ MSPs.

6. http://www.holyrood-parliament.scot/S5_Local_Gov/Reports/LGCS052017R01.pdf

7. Electoral Commission (2009) Making your mark. Good practice for designing voter materials: Guidance for electoral administrators. Available from https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/150358/Making-Your-Mark-Design-Guidance-For-Electoral-Administrators.pdf.

8. Note that the phrasing of these questions – which asked about individual voting preferences – suggests that the questions were intended for individual respondents, rather than organisational respondents.

9. If the 92 respondents who did not respond to the closed question are classified as having ‘mixed views’, then the distribution across the three categories becomes ‘yes’ (56%) ‘no’ (33%) ‘mixed views’ (11%).

10. Qualifying Commonwealth citizens are those who have the right to enter and remain in the UK.

11. The 1992 Maastricht Treaty imposed reciprocity inside the European Union concerning voting rights in local elections.

12. Note that there was an error in the wording of this question. It should have read ‘Do you agree that a voter should only be allowed to vote once in local government elections in Scotland?’

13. These figures include around a tenth of respondents at Question 23 and almost a quarter of respondents at Question 24 who simply answered ‘no’ or ‘none’, indicating that they did not think action (or further) action was required to remove barriers or widen access to voting, elections or elected office.

14. http://www.gov.scot/Resource/Doc/357865/0120931.pdf

15. Although political parties are not covered by the Equalities Act, some respondents suggested the new powers provided by the Scotland Act 2016 would allow the Scottish Parliament to legislate on this issue.