Resources for understanding Fair Voting and Reform of UK parliament: Scottish Parliament - Wikipedia, extract

Members, constituencies and voting systems

The 2003 election's 129 Members of the Scottish Parliament; 73 represented individual constituencies and 56 represented eight additional member regions.

Elections for the Scottish Parliament were amongst the first in the United Kingdom to use a mixed member proportional representation (MMS) system.^[63] The system is a form of the additional member method of proportional representation (PR), and is better known as such in the United Kingdom. However, there are additional member systems, elsewhere in the world, which are not designed to produce proportional representation.

Of the 129 MSPs, 73 are elected to represent first past the post constituencies and are known as "Constituency MSPs".^[6] Voters choose one member to represent the constituency, and the member with most votes is returned as a constituency MSP. The 73 Scottish Parliament constituencies shared the same boundaries as the UK Parliament constituencies in Scotland, prior to the 2005 reduction in the number of Scottish MPs, with the exception of Orkney and Shetland which each return their own constituency MSP. Currently, the average Scottish Parliament constituency comprises 55,000 electors.^[64] Given the geographical distribution of population in Scotland, this results in constituencies of a smaller area in the Central Lowlands, where the bulk of Scotland's population live, and much larger constituency areas in the north and west of the country, which have a low population density. The island archipelagos of Orkney, Shetland and the Western Isles comprise a much smaller number of electors, due to their disparate population and distance from the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh.^[64] If a Constituency MSP resigns from Parliament, this triggers a by-election in his or her constituency, where a replacement MSP is returned from one of the parties by the plurality system.^[63]

The remaining 56 MSPs are elected by the additional member system. In each Scottish Parliament election, electors have a second vote, where they vote for a party instead of a constituency representative. These 56 are elected in eight different electoral regions, of which constituencies are sub-divisions.^[65] Each region returns seven additional member MSPs. The eight regions are: Highlands and Islands; North East Scotland; Mid Scotland and Fife; West of Scotland; Glasgow; Central Scotland; South of Scotland; and Lothians. Each political party draws up a list of candidates standing in each electoral region.^[66] The total number of seats in the Parliament are allocated to parties proportionally to the number of votes the party received in the second vote of the ballot, calculated by dividing the number of "list" votes cast for a party by the number calculated from the number of constituency seats won in that region, plus the number of already-allocated "list" seats won in that region, plus one (to prevent division by zero), and the party with the largest number of votes remaining is allocated the first "list" seat. This is repeated iteratively until all available "list" seats are allocated.^[66] The number of seats remaining allocated to that party are filled using members from the party's list.^[66] These members are called "List MSPs". If a List MSP resigns from the Scottish Parliament, he or she is replaced by the next member on the party list.^[67]

As in the House of Commons, a number of qualifications apply to being an MSP. Such qualifications were introduced under the House of Commons Disqualification Act 1975 and the British Nationality Act 1981. Specifically, members must be over the age of 18^[68] and must be a citizen of the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland, one of the countries in the Commonwealth of Nations, a citizen of a British overseas territory, or a European Union citizen resident in the UK.^[69] Members of the police and the armed forces are disqualified from sitting in the Scottish Parliament as elected MSPs, and similarly, civil servants and members of foreign legislatures are disqualified.^[69] An individual may not sit in the Scottish Parliament if they are judged to be insane under the terms of the Mental Health Act 1983; if they are subject to a Bankruptcy Restriction Order (in England and Wales only) or if his or her estate is sequestered (in Scotland).^[69]

[edit] Elections

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