STV

I spent 6 hours walking round my ward on Friday. It was great to get the chance to both hear how folk were feeling and remind myself that its the voters in the ward and no-one else, who will decide if I have a job come May 3rd. Their concerns remain the same as ever, feeling safe, quality of housing, ease of getting about, etc.
There were many compliments about the barrow beat I managed to get for the area and the new playpark in Lochend Park. Two other things were common; No-one understands the new voting system and its in danger of putting folk off voting and no-one wants us to do a deal with the Tories because the one thing they do know is that there will be a coalition.
The second one is easy. I didn't go into elected politics to do deals with the Tories. Individually many of them are nice people but their politics are an anathema to me.
The second is more difficult. The parties can do their bit but if the Executive don't get a real and effective education campaign on PR going and soon then we are in danger of being in the ironic situation of our new, fairer voting system excluding people by its very implementation. Not a clever place to be.

The New System of Voting

There around 70 or so days to go and campaigning has really begun in earnest. The big fear I have is that the new system of voting will confuse, not because folk are stupid but because its not only different from before but the system for the Scottish parliament is different from the local election.

The Scottish parliament constituency vote uses a cross, the additional or list members vote uses numbers against party lists and the local government election is numbers against individuals.

You couldn't make this up!

I did find a brilliant explanation of how local government elections work under STV on a website by Moray Youthstart. http://www.youthstart.org/STV/ . Its worth a look. Although its aimed at young people its the best explanation I have seen. reminds me of being in the parish when people used to say they got more from the children's address than from the sermon, but lets not go there!