smart snp voter surely an oxymoron?

given that the SNP and every other major party signed off on the ballot papers i'd say it shows them all in the same light...

What I don't understand is why, if the Greens were elected on the single transferable vote system (i.e. as list not constituency MSPs) they did so badly compared to last time? People have talked about them losing out to tactical voting but that's clearly nonsense. Unless voters somehow were fooled into thinking that by putting Greens in (say) second place they were detracting from their first place vote.

Oh dear, I had to rewrite this as I got it wrong twice already, please somebody hide them. Blush. I am ashamed of myself, my countries executive but not of the general populace or our eductional system. I must admit me explaining the voting system may have caused a few false votes, especially since I hadn't voted myself for 10 years at that point - but at least I did a better job than the poor teenage council worker inside the polling station who knew less than me, and at least I tried unlike the Labour party part-time propagandist who was just there to boost his own career prospects.

Sorry Emigre, it must be confusing for you abroad - it obviously is here. There were three votes. The first vote was for a local councillor, and you could rank the candidates one to eight. Although you had to use numerals. You may think 'of course you use numerals' but you shouldn't. You might think it is obvious that you list your favourite candidate as number one and the rest in descending orde, but you shouldn't. Plus multiple party coucillors could be elected in each ward and would have to decide among themselves who was to be recommended for number one, who for number two etc. And each party would be recommending different votes in their literature of course. That was on one sheet of paper.

The second vote was a straight 'first past the post' constituency vote for a local MSP, marked with an X.
The third vote was for list candidate MSPs - candidates who are voted for across a region of constituencies, and who get elected in a complicated system according to how many of their party members were elected in the constituency votes combined with how many votes they actually received. Also marked with an X. Many people put two X's in the same column or descending numbers in the wrong sheet. Now to complicate matters further the same candidate can run as a list MSP and as a constituency MSP, and the parties can call themselves whatever they want. So for instance, in Gordon, the electorate would have seen 'Alex Salmond for First Minister SNP' which was the name the SNP ran under, which would have been their list vote. Then in the next column they would have seen 'Alex Salmond SNP' which was their constituency vote. Both marked with an X in each column.

I know you are smarter than me but it still feels like explaining the off-side rule to a blind and deaf American who has never heard of Soccer, I have tried in vain to simplify it for you to save my own sanity. Now try explaining that to a Scottish punter in 10 seconds or less !

Basically, there are different versions of STV, and the version here requires about 5.8% of the vote and have the wind blowing in the right direction to get elected. To be honest I don't understand that part and haven't found anyone who does. The more constituency votes you get, the less list votes you get - something like that ?!

The list vote which was previously called the 'second vote' was actually put first on the two column MSP sheet presumably to boost it's importance and stop people voting tactically with it, which is part of the reason the Greens lost votes since they only ran list candidates as it was too expensive to stand in every constituency. Traditionally the minor parties here only asked for people to vote for them as 'their second vote' after a voters main choice, and most people voted for two different parties just to show what nice, balanced people they are. This time if these voters voted in the second column - a first past the post constituency vote - their vote would have been wasted if it was even counted. Add to that the polarising nature of this election as a straight two-way fight between Labour and the SNP, and the miscounted votes and lost postal ballots, and I think the Scottish Greens did well to hold onto two MSPs, incidentally their best known MSPs - Harper is their nominal 'leader' and Harvie writes a column for the Big Issue which is widely read. The SSP had a similar amount of MSPs but disintegrated when they split into two parties accrimoniously. On the positive side this also robbed the BNP of a credible chance of taking a Glasow list seat.

All the parties were free to change their names which didn't help. The Labour party became the Scottish Labour party, which is straightforward enough and obviously designed to distance themselves from Blair. More controversially, the SNP became 'Alex Salmond for First Minister SNP'. This was obviously for three reasons, to boost individual candidates chances by associating them with a very popular leader, to disassociate themselves from the BNP whose symbol was a thistle, and to get their name higher up the list of candidates which were listed alphabetically. And up here we had about 30 candidates per list, which is good for democracy but can't have helped the voters.

So who did most people want to vote for ? We have no idea. Who tried to rig the election ? Labour. Who got in ? The SNP in a minority government that will struggle to pass any legislation.

It's still more democratic than England.

What a fucking eejit I am. I'm not uneduacted, I'm not ignorant, I can fly through intelligence tests and exams with flying colours, and I studied this poll in advance. I just have failed three times to explain this system and the related issues properly. IMs, feel free to hide all my previous attempts to spare my red-face. I am sure I could do it on my fourth attempt, I just know I'll be costing you hard-disk space for little reason. I am sure I voted correctly and gave the best advice igoing. To any of you smug Scottish voters who decried the spoiled ballots as proof of our nations idiocy, feel free to step up and explain it better now.

"It was perfectly simple..." "If you don't know how to vote then you shouldn't be voting"... Yeah, right. Just under 142000 people disagree. It makes me think, how many people whose votes were counted managed to do it by blind luck or through blindly following party instructions. I've been conducting follow up polls today. Far fewer people think they misvoted than actully misvoted, only about 1% think they may have misvoted or deliberately spoiled thier papers. So most people who misvoted don't even know that they spoiled their ballot papers. It couldn't have been designed worse.

Emigre, check the posts I hope will be hidden. You can probably figure out for them the answer to your questions.

what gets me is the way all the politicians (with the exception of the greens) rush to claim 'victory' and accept the 'result' when such a large number of trusting voters are discounted - and the list 'top up' seats are already allocated instead of an enquiry and recount of ALL ballots cast
QUESTION - with 2 votes on parliamentary ballot - if you 'spoil' one vote on say the constituency part but vote 'correctly' on the list system does your 'good' vote count or go down the pan with the other?
How can anyone begin talks about forming a government with so many votes discounted - and how will they deal with 'voter apathy' in the future when you take the time to turn out to vote only to find that you don't know if your vote is even counted?

"QUESTION - with 2 votes on parliamentary ballot - if you 'spoil' one vote on say the constituency part but vote 'correctly' on the list system does your 'good' vote count or go down the pan with the other?"

Initial TV reports suggested that was the case but it seems that wasn't the case. A wrong vote in one column would have flagged up the paper to be "manually adjusted and adjudicated" ( I am uncomfortable with that phrase, it conjurs up the 'Outer Limits' ) . In my constituency and the neighboring constituency 23,000 ballots had to be "manually adjusted and adjudicated" although there were 'only' 6662 spoiled ballots.

The trouble is most of the spoiled parliamentary ballots had two crosses in the first column and none in the second, or vice versa, so obviously neither vote would count. And more than 25,000 people only voted in one of the columns, effectively throwing away a vote. And many people used numerals on the parliamentary sheet and even more used crosses on the council sheet, though that is just anectdotal, I don't have figures for that. The Electoral Commission predicted this would cause voter confusion nine months ago but still went ahead regardless.

"How can anyone begin talks about forming a government with so many votes discounted - and how will they deal with 'voter apathy' in the future when you take the time to turn out to vote only to find that you don't know if your vote is even counted?"

Voter turnout in my area was 52%, which amazingly is up 17% from the last election. It is pretty obvious why the SNP claim victory anyway, as it was Douglas Alexander, the Labour Scottish secretary who commissioned it - Holyroods elections are still decided in Westminster. Sure, all the parties signed it off but that was presumably to avoid the bad press if they had quibbled or delyed the election. There had been talk of delying the election so prisoners could get the vote the same as in the rest of Europe but that was glossed over. Salmond took the initiative straightaway in his first speech after winning saying he wouldn't rely on the Electoral Commission review but would have a full, independent judicial inquiry. I can't see this fiasco being repeated, it is an international embarrassment. I'll be writing to every SNP MSP and local party urging them to scrap computerised voting. I can't see DRS getting awarded anymore UK voting contracts, they never should have with Neil Kinnock on their board.


"There is nothing wrong with your voting machine. Do not attempt to adjust the government. We are controlling transmission. We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical. We can roll the image; make it flutter. We can change the focus to a soft blur or sharpen it to crystal clarity. For the next four years, sit quietly and we will control all that you see and hear. We repeat: there is nothing wrong with your voting machine. You are about to participate in a great adventure. You are about to experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind to the outer limits."

"The Scottish Secretary was looking increasingly isolated last night after it emerged he did not read a Scotland Office research report containing evidence that the combined ballot paper he chose for last week's Holyrood election could confuse voters and cause them to spoil their ballots."