PaulLothian
Member
I think you are reading more into my comment than I originally intended - I did say it was disappointing rather than objectionable! However, since you asked...
My concern about the list system is that the electorate has in effect only the ability to endorse a package of measures put forward in a party manifesto, not to decide on the person who is most likely to be successful in promoting these measures. This is increasingly relevant when the differences between parties's policies are slight, which is now often the case for the major UK-wide parties.
We have seen the unedifying sight of exceptional levels of jockeying for positions on the List, particularly among former Westminster politicians who clearly feel that they have a lot to offer their country (a view that their former electorates appear to have disagreed with, in some cases forcefully). In the course of these manoeuvres, it would seem that some very good existing politicians have found themselves knocked lower down the list, supplanted by people who I would never consider voting for if they appeared as individual candidates.
I believe that one of the strengths of current Scottish national and local politics is that many people are engaged enough to want to consider what strengths their candidates have, and whether these individuals are likely to be able to do what they say they will.
I know enough about about local politicians who I directly elect (or who would like to be elected by me) to make that decision. I recognise my constituency MSP and meet her at events and in the street, but as far as local list candidates are concerned, I have no idea!
There are solutions, but unfortunately all of them add complexity and increase the risk that misunderstandings skew the results.
One possibility that I do like in principle is to have the List Ballot paper naming all candidates for each party and asking voters to vote for an individual. All the votes for any list candidate for that party would be aggregated to make up the total vote used in the Modified d'Hondt counting system (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D'Hondt_method). However, the candidate with the highest number of votes would be top of the list, and so on. This gives some degree of control back to the electorate. It would be perfectly feasible to also have an option for 'Any candidate of Party X', for voters who support the party but have no opinions about individual candidates.
There are various other tweaks that could be considered on the question of eligibility to attempt to make sure that we only elect politicians who appear to be actively wanted by their electorates. I am not endorsing any of these specifically, just noting that they exist. Among other things, we could choose that:
- no candidate may stand for both a constituency and the list
- a candidate may stand for both a constituency and the list, but that if he/she does not attain a certain level in the constituency vote (my preference would be for 2nd place) they would be also removed from the List, or dropped down the List ranking by an agreed amount
I do actually believe that Scotland has, by the standards of most parliamentary systems, a means of ensuring that its Parliament generally reflects the preferences of its electorate, but it's not perfect, and could be made better.
All of which makes the 'Scotland is a one-party state' line, offered by people who should know better, rather annoying - http://lallandspeatworrier.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/our-one-party-state.html !
hock:
. As an SNP supporter, I'm obviously disappointed that there's not a majority by it's hardly a cataclysmic loss by any stretch of the imagination. Majorities will be rare in the Scottish Parliament and it will be a while before we ever see another majority. If we ever see another majority. They'll get their manifesto through I would imagine. It's such a secure minority that they only I need to get one party (or a handful of sympathetic MSPs) onside. 
(Historically much less remarkable than Labour's slipping to 3rd place in Scotland, but did nevertheless surprise me that no one has - so far as I can tell - noticed it amid all the intensive media coverage of Labour's parallel situation in Scotland)