PR Voting will Loosen Labour Hold on Local AuthoritiesBy Andrew Denholm
Published June 24th 2004 in The Scotsman
The Labour Party’s grip on councils across the country was loosened yesterday after MSPs voted to introduce proportional representation in time for the 2007 local authority elections.
The Local Governance (Scotland) Bill will deliver a single transferable vote system (STV) which will replace the current first-past-the-post mechanism.
The legislation, passed by 96 votes to 18 with two abstentions, also reduces the age of eligibility to be a councillor from 21 to 18 and removes a ban on council employees standing for election.
The bill also establishes an independent remuneration committee to consider a replacement of the current expenses system, pension arrangements, and a one-off severance scheme for councillors standing down in 2007.
The Scottish Liberal Democrats, who secured PR based on three- and four-member wards in their post-election coalition deal with Labour last May - despite bitter opposition among Jack McConnell’s party - heralded the bill’s passage, saying it would deliver "fair votes".
However, they were criticised by some opposition parties who lost their bid to make the system even fairer, after experts warned that by not allowing five-member wards the Executive’s system was the least proportional system of STV in the world.
Helen Eadie and Elaine Smith, Labour backbenchers who lost a last-ditch bid to force a referendum of the Scottish population on whether to allow PR, joined the Tories to vote against the bill, while party colleagues Bill Butler and Paul Martin abstained.
The SSP leader Tommy Sheridan said the proposal was "the worst of all worlds".
Election Day '09 was a roller-coaster for election reformers. Instant runoff voting had a great night in Minnesota, where St. Paul voters chose to implement IRV for its city elections, and Minneapolis voters used IRV for the first time—with local media touting it as a big success. As the Star-Tribune noted in endorsing IRV for St. Paul, Tuesday’s elections give the Twin Cities a chance to show the whole state of Minnesota the benefits of adopting IRV. There were disappointments in Lowell and Pierce County too, but high-profile multi-candidate races in New Jersey and New York keep policymakers focused on ways to reform elections; the Baltimore Sun and Miami Herald were among many newspapers publishing commentary from FairVote board member and former presidential candidate John Anderson on how IRV can mitigate the problems of plurality elections.