Those of you that are properly trained sales professionals will be familiar with KISS. For those of you that are not, please allow me to explain.
K. EEP
I. T
S. IMPLE
S. TUPID
The vast majority of the public think selling is all about the gift of the gab. Nothing could be further from the truth. The best salespeople are far better at listening than talking. The concept of K. I. S S. is easy, don’t complicate matters. Do not sell the technology, sell the benefit. Talk and explain in simple terms so that your customer will understand. Do not try to impress your customer with your superior technical brain, tell him how it will work for him. This applies to anything and everything you need in your daily life.
It is the exact same with politics and especially true when it comes to the rather complicated voting system used for Holyrood. The Unionists that set up this D’Hondt/AMS voting method to confuse. It wasn’t done to keep it simple, indeed the exact opposite was their motivation. They wanted to confuse you, sadly not just the Unionists are now happy with the confusion over List Votes!
Best to firstly understand Holyrood and Devolution. It was never about the Unionists trying to improve Scotland’s governance or to make your life any better. It was only ever introduced with the sole aim of halting the march of the SNP and Scottish independence.To unionists their biggest job is always to protect the union, not to protect you! . Nothing they ever say or do is for Scotland’s benefit!
The complicated voting system used is, 73 FPTP seats and eight Regional Areas giving us a further 56 ‘List Seats.’ The idea behind it is simple, make it virtually impossible for any one party to win a majority on its own. They believed this system would always ensure coalition government. As the SNP was a single party and there were three Britnat Parties then the SNP could never hope for power without a House Jock Party and that would never happen. Too late the Unionists found out that their cunning plan wasn’t quite as secure as they had hoped.
The premise is simply this, the more successful you are in Constituencies then the less successful you will be on the Regional Lists. This is why in 2016 when SNP won a landslide 60 seats in the Constituency on 46.5% they only won four List Seats. This, despite the fact they received 963,000 list votes. One seat for every 240,750 votes. Not exactly a good return is it? This coming May the SNP are riding even higher in the polls than 5 years ago. The past 21 polls have shown SNP sitting at anywhere between 52%-58%. Simply put this means that the likelihood is that if you give both votes to the SNP you are actually going to get none or at best one or two list seats and yet again up to 1,000,000 SNP Votes will just elect Unionists.
What it means is that for every seat in the Constituency won your list Vote is divided down. In 2016 SNP won all 10 Glasgow seats. This meant all the votes it won on the list, 111,101 were divided by 11 and got them ZERO seats. Labour who didn’t win a single Constituency in their old heartlands had 59,151 they were rewarded with three seats.This is not proportional as some would tell you, it is gerrymandering.
Between now and polling day in May, all the main Constituency parties are going to try and convince you to give them your list votes. The Unionists won a landslide in 2016 and with SNP higher in the polls than then, the same outcome of zero seats seems likely everywhere not just in Glasgow. If things stay the same the Unionists will win a landslide on the lists throughout Scotland. You though have it in you to stop that happening. KISS!
If you are an Independence supporter, you can now vote in a manner that will let you elect another independence MSP, not a Unionist MSP. Your choice is simple vote SNP 1 and ensure SNP win all the Constituency seats then vote Alba on the list and elect true independence MSPs, and deny the Unionists the ability to sit in our Scots Parliament. If you truly want Independence this is the sensible, simple way to help achieve it. Alba will not be standing in the Constituency (unlike the Greens) so all of the Alba votes on the list will count. Together we can reduce the Unionists to a rump.
Super Majority
The super majority is something else that others will try to complicate. It is actually a very simple concept with huge advantages for independence supporters. Some background first. There are people who profess to be experts that suggest there is no difference between a simple majority and a, super majority. That is just bombastic piffle. Let me explain, Holyrood is constituted in such a way that to be able to fully control the direction of anything in matters of constitution you need two-thirds of the entire Parliament to agree. Again the Unionists that devised devolution never envisaged a time when there would be more than one party of ‘Separatists!’
Therefore if for example a Party with a simple majority wanted to call a General Election they cannot without at least one other party agreeing. Should the SNP at any future date want to call a Plebiscite Independence Election on their own they cannot manage that. You need to have 86 MSPs agreeing. No single party can achieve that with the D’Hondt AMS voting system.
The advantages of a SNP-Alba super majority is this, we the Scottish voters are 100% in charge of our own destiny. Westminster nor any of their parties can interfere in our democratic process. No Section 30, needed, we will just dissolve our parliament and hold an Independence plebiscite! It is legal, democratic and Unionists wouldn’t dare boycott it.
Global recognition is the most important step in having our independence recognised. It does not matter a jot if Westminster refuses to acknowledge the outcome. It is what the EU countries, and all the other nations of the world do that matters. Plebiscite elections and super majorities are recognised the world over as a way of expressing the will of the people.
The time has come to stop being tribal. What we need to do is what is best for Scotland’s Independence. What is best, is a super majority! The simplest way to achieve that independence super majority is to Vote SNP 1 Alba 2.
On May 6th, Keep It Simple Stupid!
I suspect there will be a few Unionist MSP’s will be filling their pampers as we speak.
Yep thon yoons will be looking for jobs at Mark’s and Sparks.
This might just be what I need in order to hold my nose & vote SNP#1!
Voting for ISP or AFI #2 was going to happen but neither party had persuaded me they would amount to anything at all. Alba is at a whole new level.
Thank you, Alex.
SNP 1 ALBA 2
Now that’s a scoeline I like!
now ISP and AFI need to join Alba to maximise the list vote .
Just read your piece it shows you do not understand D’Hondt AMS system of voting for Holyrood. Yesterday’s Survation poll shows that SNP with higher vote tgwn 2016 will win ZERO List Seats. Alba are not threat to SNP they are a huge threat to unionists including Greens. You should check your facts.
It’s great to see Alex back.it almost feels like a new dawn after the hellish nightmare of the past few years, this is the first good news in such a long time and I’d like to thank you Roddy for your question to Alex yesterday and outing those crass questions he had to answer, in fact they they weren’t questions they were vicious, sneering, nasty cheap shots from vicious. nasty, sneering, scumbags, my blood was boiling that they were allowed to smear him like that, but Alex dealt with it in his usual dignified manner
Excellent explanation. “The scales falling from one’s eyes” and “The truth will set you free” are much quoted in the cause of independence. As of yesterday they are now vital in achieving our self determination. They have been ignored for the past six years as the politics of maintaining devolution, the status quo and ignoring independence, whilst removing its loudest advocates, has required blinkers and lies demanding the electorate must vote SNP 1&2 as being the only route to independence. That has now been challenged on the political stage and they don’t like it. The truth, which Alex Salmond has been fighting for for the past few years, will enlighten the electorate (in more ways than one I imagine) and make a super-majority and independence achievable sooner than many expected. This is not what the gradualist leadership of the SNP wanted hence their vitriol. Independence or the mechanism to achieving it is within reach and if the SNP don’t get on board it will just confirm the concerns of many that they are a party of devolution and no further. A week is a long time in politics. Once the scales fall the truth will set us free.
“What it means is that for every seat in the Constituency won your list Vote is divided down. In 2016 SNP won all 10 Glasgow seats. This meant all the votes it won on the list, 111,101 were divided by 11 and got them ZERO seats. Labour who didn’t win a single Constituency in their old heartlands had 59,151 they were rewarded with three seats.This is not proportional as some would tell you, it is gerrymandering.”
Sorry but I have to disagree. It is intended to bring the results back towards something closer to PR, not to be PR. Hence it is not gerrymandering, so view it as such is to consider it in too simplistic a manner,
One has to view the list vote in the region as the more important one, intended to shape the makeup; while accommodating the existence of individual consistency votes. One could complain about the 5% threshold caused by the AM vote being in regions, and I believe some countries run the same sort of system but with the AM portion across the whole country.
If one uses the numbers on the wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasgow_(Scottish_Parliament_electoral_region)
In 2016 it lists the region as having 16 total seats, 9 from the constituencies and 7 from the list.
The actual seats being SNP 9 (56.3%), Labour 4 (25.0%), Tory 2 (12.5%), Green 1 (6.3%). [A]
If we look at the table for the AM votes, it gives totals of:
SNP 111101 (44.8%), Labour 59151 (23.8%), Tory 23533 (11.9%), Green 23398 (9.4%), LibDem 5850 (2.4%).
Treating the list vote as pure PR across the 16 seats, and rounding up, we would end up with these seats:
SNP 7 (7.1), Labour 4 (3.8), Tory 2 (1.9), Green 2 (1.5), LibDem 1 (0.38). [B]
If instead we were to round down, we would end up with these seats:
SNP 7, Labour 3, Tory 1, Green 1; plus 4 seats to somehow share between all the others. [C]
Taking in to account the threshold effect in the regions, and then treating the list vote as pure PR, but using the top 5 achieving parties (so including LibDems); then recalculating the % vote for those who so voted, and ignoring or throwing away the choices of those who voted for others we have the following. Out of a total of 229033 votes, the number cast would yield these numbers:
SNP 48.5%, Labour 25.8%, Tory 12.9%, Green 10.2%, LibDem 2.6%
Round up: SNP 8 (7.8), Labour 4 (4.1), Tory 2 (2.1), Green 2 (1.6), LibDem 0 (0.4) [D]
Round down: SNP 7, Labour 4, Tory 2, Green 1; plus 2 seats to somehow share between all the others. [E]
If we do the same calculation, but only considering the top 4 parties, i.e. those achieving over 5% of the popular vote, the out of the 223183 votes cast for those lot, we end up with these numbers.:
SNP 49.8%, Labour 26.5%, Tory 13.2%, Green 10.5%.
Round up: SNP 8 (7.96), Labour 4 (4.24), Tory 2 (2.11), Green 2 (1.68) [F]
Round down: SNP 7, Labour 4, Tory 2, Green 1; plus 2 seats to somehow share between all the others. [G]
Which now listed together is:
[B] SNP 7, Labour 4, Tory 2, Green 2, LibDem 1; unallocated: 0
[C] SNP 7, Labour 3, Tory 1, Green 1; unallocated: 4
[D] SNP 8, Labour 4, Tory 2, Green 2; unallocated: 0
[E] SNP 7, Labour 4, Tory 2, Green 1; unallocated: 2
[F] SNP 8, Labour 4, Tory 2, Green 2; unallocated: 0
[G] SNP 7, Labour 4, Tory 2, Green 1; unallocated: 2
[A] SNP 9, Labour 4, Tory 2, Green 1
(that last one being the actual outcome)
So one can’t really claim the result has been gerrymandered, unless you wish to argue that the SNP have unjustifiably gained at the expense of the Greens and/or LibDems.
I would suggest the result is “broadly proportional”, while still providing for the existence of individual constituency MSPs, that that a similar result would be achieved under a pure PR system in the regions. I’ll leave someone else to do the maths for pure PR across the whole country.
So the characterisation to the effect making it difficult for one party to gain an overall majority is simply the result of a system with a significant element of proportionality.
So it seems to me that the SNP have not been cheated, and what you’re really complaining about is that they’ve not been able to unfairly gain in the way they would if we ran the same FPTP system as is used in Westminster.
So yes, KISS; but one should only simplify as far as necessary, going to far just ends up with stupidity and/or absurdity.
I am claiming no such thing and you are viewing this it seems from a unionist perspective. The storm is coming and Alba will remove a plethora of Unionists.
“you are viewing this it seems from a unionist perspective.”
Not really, I’d suggest you’re maybe too defensive in seeing argument against some points as being due to a biased position.
In 2014 I decided not to vote, despite being mildly of a no view – and that wasn’t as any form of ‘boycott’. If I was a “unionist”, I’d have voted no. While I was relieved by the result in 2014, that was mainly down to avoidance of hassle, not due to any strong ideological views.
At the moment, I’m split on the union/independence question; but f it came to a referendum, then again I’d probably not take part. Except if there was any form of mandatory participate / threshold, in which case I’d probably spoil my ballot such that it could not count towards any veto or boycott.
If Alba do manage to result in the super majority for independence, and subsequently that leads to it, then so be it. Scotland has largely been a distinct polity for a long time, if it wishes to forge its own path in the world, then who am I to gainsay it?
I’m talking about the normal way one should or would want a parliament to be selected, even assuming Scotland becomes independent, and keeps the current selection mechanism for some period of time.
In that event one could argue over the split between the list and constituency within a region; one could make the selection close to PR by having 8 representatives from each, then the list would give very close to PR while still preserving constituency representatives.
One could possibly make the system better with respect to the ~5% threshold by adding a third layer with an extra set of representatives selected across the whole country – by summing up the list votes for all 8 regions and then running the De’Hondt algorithm again. So maybe add an extra 8 people selected in that layer (giving 137 members); or remove one from each region, either the list or the constituency, leaving 15 each (ignoring the odd man), and again select those 8 by running the numbers from the sum of the lists across the whole country.
The trade offs are just how PR one wants it to be (the split between constituency vs list), the issue of the threshold, the issue of how long it takes to calculate; and if one wants to have the possibility of a governing party in power on a minority of the vote, or if one would then prefer such to lead to post election negotiations over forming a government as tends to happen on the continent.
Absent a question like independence (either if it didn’t exist, or post independence), I’d suggest the current scheme, but with the third layer to address the threshold would be workable. In such a situation, I’d expect that most parties would be on the list and in constituencies, that we’d not expect land slides, and so the list constituency balance could be even.
Or maybe 7 from the constituencies in each region, 8 from the list in each region, and 9 across the whole country considering the sum of all list votes. This would then allow for results on essentially the same timescale as currently; except where we had a really close election and the 9 in the whole country run had to be determined to figure out the exact results. I’d expect those 9 would normally fall to the minority parties and other minor vote winners, only occasionally would they be from major parties and so affect the balance.
That is not (IMO) complex, it just requires that people properly appreciate that the list selects the makeup of the parliament being essentially PR, while still having the ability to select individual preferred local representatives. So folks have to vote accordingly. It would allow a similar manner of bias as now, in that constituency representatives could gain more than their “fair share” for their party, but that is the trade off in having constituency members.
Not really you say at least you don’t deny it I’ll credit you with that much. The system was put in place to ensure that SNP could never be in government. Like most things Westminster touches they made an arse, of it. Be as, pedantic as, you like it was gerrymandered and come May we are going to use it against you. A Super Majority is coming.
“we are going to use it against you”
Sorry, but you’re projecting, seeing an enemy where one does not exist. I have not been voting for unionist parties, nor their members.
If Scotland does become independent, I shall simply enjoy my new found dual nationality.
(We best end this sub thread here…)
Yes we better
Naekiddin. If SNP loss lots to the ALBA lists doesn’t that deplete the number of constituency seats they can win. A think there is still a lack of explanation regarding d’hondt system that the average person needs to understand. Hard going for an 84 year old and under.
No – the impact is the other way, constituency wins act to reduce list wins – but only with respect to the same party.
As an analogy, think of dealing a deck of 16 cards between 6* players, this is done with an aim towards following the share on the list ballot.
However before doing so, 9 cards have been withdrawn and previously distributed between some of those six, according to the the result of the constituency ballot. When now distributing the remaining 7 cards, it may not be possible to exactly match the result in the list ballot, so one gets as close as possible.
If one player (SNP) has already got their share (or greater) according to the list ballot, they will get no more. Hence additional parties (Alba, Green) who espouse a common policy (independence) could still get their share of the list ballot.
Since the constituency has slightly more than half of the regions seats (9 vs 7 on the list), it is may not be possible to exactly match the list ballot within the region when a party sweeps the constituencies, but polls less than 50% on the list. For such a party sweeping the constutuencies, to achieve many more, that party has to be polling at something like 55% or more on the list.
* SNP, Alba, Green, Labour, Conservative, LibDem