Voting clarified

Douglas Turner sheds some light on elections to the Scottish Parliament but unfortunately also adds to the misunderstanding (Letters, 3 January).

The Scottish Parliament is not elected by the Single Transferable Vote (STV) version of proportional representation. Our MSPs are elected by the Additional Member System (AMS) that gives us two votes, one of a Constituency MSP and one for a Regional Party List.

We use the STV system of proportional representation (STV-PR) to elect our councillors in Scotland. STV-PR gives us only one vote but that vote is transferable according to our individual preferences.

STV-PR elects all the members on the same basis – there are no ordered party lists.

Perhaps we can look forward to the day when we also use STV-PR to elect the members of the Scottish Parliament.

James Gilmour

East Parkside

Edinburgh

Apologies, Sandy Gemmill is correct (Letters, 3 January), and the figure I quoted was for the percentage of seats won by the SNP.

For the record, the SNP polled a total of 44 per cent in the regional section of the 2011 election and the other 14 parties collectively polled 56 per cent.

Elsewhere, the fallout from the referendum continues with letters continuing to complain about how the vote was structured – from the supposedly winning side.

There has also been a call for tactical voting to oust the SNP. Interestingly, following the surge in membership of the Yes parties, mention was made of forming a Yes alliance which provoked outrage in these pages from contributors who described this proposal as a distortion of democracy.

Douglas Turner

Derby Street

Edinburgh