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4, OctoberDecember 2008

An Opposing View of Scotland's Ballot Paper Problem: Arbuthnott and the Government had the Right Idea
THOMAS C ARL L UNDBERG
looked into the problems associated with not only the ballots, but also the electronic counting system used in Scotland for the rst time, the tight administrative schedule for making these changes and the fragmented nature of electoral administration in the United Kingdom. The Gould Report to the UK's Electoral Commission recommended a return to the two separate ballot papers of previous elections, while the Arbuthnott Commission, charged by the UK Secretary of State for Scotland with examining the implications of Scotland's various constituency boundaries and its four dierent electoral systems, in 2006 advocated a single, twovote ballot paper.2 This change was recommended in order to prevent misunderstandings about what the two votes were forhow each contributed to the election of Members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs)as well as to avoid the notion that party-list-elected MSPs, previously elected by the `second' vote, had a second-class status.3 Reverting to two separate ballot papers, as recommended by the Gould Report and accepted by Des Browne, Secretary of State for Scotland, is not likely to enhance voters' understanding of how MMP works. Indeed, at the core of this `ballot paper problem' lies a deeper problem: understanding that MMP is a form of proportional representation. The parochial British name for MMP, the additional member system (AMS), reects (and exacerbates) the misunderstandings surrounding the Scottish
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Introduction: Scotland's ballot paper problem

On 3 May 2007, the third Scottish Parliament election since devolution used a dierent ballot format from the one used in the previous elections. In 1999 and 2003, Scottish voters used two dierent ballot papers, each requiring one vote, when using the mixed-member proportional (MMP) system to elect their parliament. One vote elects the candidate in a single-member constituency with the most support (a plurality), while another vote elects seven candidates from political party lists in each of Scotland's eight electoral regions in a proportional way, taking each region's constituency winners into account when allocating the seven seats. This compensatory mixedmember electoral system (also used to elect the National Assembly for Wales and the London Assembly) is based on that used to elect the German Bundestag (and most state parliaments in that federal country) since the late 1940s, as well as New Zealand's House of Representatives since 1996. German and New Zealand voters, however, cast their both their constituency and party list votes on a single ballot paper, as is the case in most places that use MMP. In 2007, Scottish voters did the same, but `rejected' ballots constituted over 4 per cent of the total, compared to less than 0.7 per cent at the 2003 election.1 The media condemned the `chaos' surrounding the election, and an inquiry

# The Author 2008. Journal compilation # The Political Quarterly Publishing Co. Ltd. 2008 Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA

Parliament's electoral system. While there certainly were diculties with the May 2007 election, the extent of the problem was exaggerated in the British media. Ultimately, only the most supercial aspects of the problem have been dealt with via abolition of the two-vote ballot paper, which goes against the Arbuthnott recommendation. This `quick x' may reduce the number of invalid votes, but at the price of future confusion unless public education improves signicantly, not least by explaining that the electoral system is proportional.

The British media and Scottish election `chaos'

The Scottish Parliament election of 2007 should be known for the historic victory of the Scottish National party (SNP), which managed to form a minority government after beating its main rival, the Scottish Labour party, by one seat. Instead, much of the media coverage focused on stories of electoral `chaos' in Scotland. `Review under way on voting chaos' was the BBC News Online headline.4 The (UK) Press Association wrote: `Scotland: Poll hit by ballot chaos.'5 Some observers, like Mike Dailly of the Govan Law Centre, claimed that voters had been `denied democracy' and that Scottish democracy was `in crisis', while SNP leader Alex Salmond said that he would launch an inquiry that would `be charged with laying bare the outrage of why over 100,000 Scots were denied their democratic voice'.6 It is true that many voters apparently had problems with how to vote. As noted above, there was a much higher number of invalid ballots at this election, although sloppy reporting makes this problem appear worse than it was. While the number of rejected votes was well over the 100,000 estimated in the immediate aftermath of the election, at 146,099, this number represents votes, not voters.7
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Much of the election coverage, as well as the Gould Report itself, confusingly uses the term `ballot paper' to mean a single vote, rather than a sheet of paper. This is very problematic when the mixedmember electoral system, as used in Scotland in 2007, employs two votes on the same ballot paper (or `sheet', in Gould's terminology). Voters had two votes to be cast in two dierent columns on the same ballot paper, so the actual number of voters casting rejected votes was far lower than 146,099. There were 60,455 regional (party list) votes rejected (2.88 per cent of the total) and 85,644 rejected constituency votes (4.08 per cent); in 2003, only 0.65 per cent of regional and 0.66 per cent of constituency votes were rejected.8 The report later states that among `96% of the parliamentary ballot papers counted, the voter cast a valid vote on both the regional ballot paper [sic] and the constituency ballot paper [sic]', revealing that about 4 per cent of voters cast at least one invalid vote.9 Comparisons can made with other places that use MMP with a single ballot paper for both votes (Table 1). The London Assembly used MMP with a single ballot for the constituency vote (on the left) and the London-wide regional vote (on the right) in its 2000 and 2004 elections. In 2000, 5.0 per cent of Londonwide votes and 9.2 per cent of constituency votes were invalid, while in 2004, this dropped to 2.5 and 6.2 per cent, respectively.10 Not content with this improvement, however, London switched to two separate ballot papers for the 2008 Assembly elections with yet more reduction in invalid votes (1.7 and 2.0 per cent, respectively).11 Germany, the rst contemporary example of MMP (dating back to the late 1940s, with two-vote ballots in use from the 1950s at the federal level), puts the constituency (`rst') vote on the left, with the party list (`second') vote on the right. This is the reverse of Scotland's 2007 ballot, but the same as what was done in London's rst two

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elections. In the last German Bundestag (federal) election in 2005, 1.6 per cent of party list votes and 1.8 per cent of constituency votes were invalid.12 In New Zealand, a two-vote ballot (with the party list vote on the left and the constituency vote on the right) has been used since MMP replaced single-member plurality (`rst-past-the-post') in 1996. Results13 show that in 1996, 0.39 per cent of party list votes and 0.91 per cent of the constituency votes were invalid, and there was an increase at the 1999 election to 0.95 per cent of the party list votes and 1.82 per cent of the constituency votes. The 2002 election, however, saw a drop in invalid votes to 0.42 per cent for party list and 1.31 per cent of constituency votes, while the 2005 election saw a similar result of 0.46 and 1.10 per cent, respectively. Aside from the lower level of invalid votes than seen in Scotland's 2007 election, the above results show a higher invalid vote on the constituency side of the ballot paper, regardless of whether this is on the left or the right. This pattern could indicate that contrary to not understanding the electoral system, voters actually do understand that proportional representation means that their votes are more likely than in a major-

itarian system to elect someone; this is what political scientists would call `rational behaviour'.14 Furthermore, supporters of minor parties that do not nominate candidates in constituency races might not vote for any of the less numerous constituency candidates. In Lesotho, which rst used MMP in 2002 after switching from single-member plurality elections, two single-vote ballots were used, with the rst being the constituency vote (as in Scotland before 2007). Here, despite the separate ballot papers, there were more invalid votes on the constituency (3.2 per cent) than party list (2.1 per cent) balloting; researchers suggest that because only the two largest parties nominated candidates in all constituencies, `electors who would otherwise have voted for a minority party chose not to cast a vote for the constituency seat, yet voted for their favoured party in the PR election'.15 Therefore, in Scotland, at least some voters who abstained in the constituency vote might have known how the system works, and abstained because they were supporters of smaller parties that did not nominate constituency candidates, or whose candidates did not have a chance of winning.

Table 1: Invalid votes at recent MMP elections Location and year Scottish Parliament 2003* Scottish Parliament 2007 London Assembly 2000** London Assembly 2004** London Assembly 2008* German Bundestag 2005** New Zealand Parliament 1996 New Zealand Parliament 1999 New Zealand Parliament 2002 New Zealand Parliament 2005 Lesotho 2002* Party list (%) 0.65 2.88 5.00 2.50 1.70 1.60 0.39 0.95 0.42 0.46 2.10 Constituency (%) 0.66 4.08 9.20 6.20 2.00 1.80 0.91 1.82 1.31 1.10 3.20

Notes: * Two separate ballot papers; all others used two columns on a single paper. ** Constituency vote on the left; other two-vote papers had constituency vote on right.

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Two-vote MMP ballots

The Gould Report, however, blames the two-vote ballot for confusing voters, claiming that `there is strong evidence that the combined Scottish parliamentary ballot sheet was primarily responsible for the high level of rejected ballot papers'.16 The evidence cited consists of its analysis of the roughly 4 per cent of voters who had one or both votes rejected, of which most (75 per cent) cast only one vote; the remainder cast two votes in one column, or otherwise invalidated their ballots.17 The report suggests three possible explanations for why voters would not cast both of their votes: deliberate abstention; unawareness of the fact that they had two votes; and confusion arising from the presence of some people's names (including Alex Salmond and Tommy Sheridan, leaders of their respective parties) on the regional side of the ballot, rather than just parties' names.18 The report makes a brief reference to academic work by researchers at Strathclyde University showing that in the Glasgow and Lothians electoral regions, higher levels of social deprivation, coupled with a longer list of parties in the regional column, making the ballot more dicult to read, might explain the higher amount of invalid votes there.19 Otherwise, there is no signicant analysis to back up the report's assertion that `it was clear that voters were particularly confused by the combined Scottish parliamentary ballot sheet'.20 The Gould Report, furthermore, points to what was considered inadequate research into what kind of ballot layout voters would understand, saying that `the primary focus must be on producing a ballot paper that meets the needs of voters rather than the political or technical preferences of those involved in implementing the election'.21 Indeed, the authors actually blame `a notable level of party self interest evident in Ministerial decision-making' for the problems asso572 T ho m a s Ca r l L u nd b e rg
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ciated with the ballot papers',22 concluding that `the voter was treated as an afterthought by virtually all the other stakeholders'.23 The report says very little about why the Arbuthnott Commission recommended the two-vote ballot paper (one sentence: `to better reect the way AMS [sic] works'24), yet the Commission's reasoning behind its recommendation is very important. The Arbuthnott Commission describes the Scottish Parliament's electoral system as `a form of mixed member proportional system which combines the election of constituency candidates with a vote for a party', pointing out that the ocial government label `additional member system' is `an unhelpful term which suggests that regional members are ``added on''. A more accurate description is ``mixed member proportional system'', as used in New Zealand.'25 The Commission is right to criticise the use of the term `additional member system': it is parochial, misleading and value-laden. The term is only used in Britain; it is not used elsewhere in the world, despite the use of mixed-member electoral systems in a number of countries. The vast majority of electoral systems experts use the term `mixed-member proportional', rst coined in New Zealand, to refer to mixedmember electoral systems that achieve an overall outcome on a partisan basis that is proportional to the party vote.26 Many mixed-member electoral systems do not compensate on a partisan basis for disproportionality resulting from the constituency races; these semi-proportional systems are called `mixed-member majoritarian' (MMM) in most literature,27 or `parallel', in reference to how most of them set up the two tiers of candidates in the election.28 The term `AMS' does not distinguish between MMP and MMM, yet the former is a proportional system, while the latter is not. Finally, `AMS' is a value-laden term because, as the Arbuthnott Commission notes above, it suggests that party list-elected members of assem-

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blies using mixed-member systems are added on to the ranks of the traditional, constituency-elected members more familiar in the British context. This labelling could enhance the potential for party list-elected members of these assemblies to experience legitimacy problems.29 Terminology is not a trivial issue to the Arbuthnott Commission, which condemns how Scotland's electoral system `is portrayed as an adaptation of the rst past the post [single-member plurality] system. We do not think this helps the public and elected representatives to understand or adjust to the new system', citing approvingly how the New Zealand Electoral Commission describes MMP `as a completely new system'.30 The Commission reports with concern that public knowledge of the system actually slipped as revealed in knowledge quizzes administered in survey research, particularly regarding the purpose of the two votes; perhaps most alarming is that less than a quarter of respondents understood that the regional vote is meant to make the outcome as proportional as possible.31 Therefore, the Commission also recommends32 referring to the two votes as `constituency vote' instead of `rst vote', and `regional vote' instead of `second vote' (which implies it could be a second preference or of lesser value), and redesigning the ballot paper to reinforce the functions of the two votes, using the New Zealand two-vote ballot paper, with the party vote on the left and the constituency vote on the right, as its model.33 Most MMP systems use a single ballot paper with two votes, while MMM systems tend to use two separate ballots. Arguably, this distinction is in keeping with the logic of the principle of representation, which is that of proportional representation in MMP, and that of `diluted majoritarianism' in MMM. In MMP elections, the party vote has primacy, with the constituency vote acting as a way to personalise local representation (indeed, in Germany the system is called `per-

sonalised proportional representation'). Germany uses MMP heavily, both in its federal parliament, the Bundestag, as well as in 13 of its 16 state parliaments (Landtage), where ten of those 13 use two-vote ballots for MMP.34 The German approach is to put the constituency vote on the left side, calling it the `rst vote', while the party list vote (`second vote') is placed in the right-hand column. This placement was rejected when New Zealand introduced MMP using the reverse order to avoid confusion over the importance of each vote in the determination of each party's total seats in parliament. Some British journalists suspected that the new Scottish Parliament ballot format was not introduced to clarify the role of each vote in determining seats, but for partisan political advantage. The BBC's Brian Taylor wrote this in his blog on the BBC website:
The big parties knew what was happening when the regional and constituency votes were lumped together. It was designed to ditch the Greens and the SSP, to end the impression that the regional vote was a `second choice', a chance to take a risk. They knew what was happeningand they acquiesced. (Incidentally, it worked.)35

ve not to Realistically, it would be na expect that parties would try to inuence a process of electoral system reform in their favour. The United Kingdom's Labour government, ultimately responsible for changes to the Scottish Parliament electoral system, defended itself, however, with the then Secretary of State for Scotland, Douglas Alexander, saying:
With changes taking place and the complexity of voting systems we should be making the voting process as straight forward as possible. All the voter should have to think about is which party's policies meet their wishes. They shouldn't have to worry about how to ll out the ballot paper. That is why I want a single ballot paper for the Scottish Parliament electionsremoving any confusion that a vote on the regional list is less important, or a second choice.36
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It is likely that Alexander is referring to the suspicion, supported by research cited above,37 that some voters were casting their `second votes' for second preferences. Vote splitting at Scottish Parliament elections increased from 20 to 28 per cent, according to survey evidence.38 While some vote splitters might not realise the importance of the party vote, others, however, might know very well how the system works: in some places, vote-splitting is a rational action because large parties (like Labour) will win so many seats from constituency races that they will not be eligible for regional seats, so supporters would eectively be `wasting' their regional votes on them.39 Whether Labour voters were more likely to desert their party when casting the second vote is hard to establish since 2003 election results show a decline in support when compared to 1999 for both Labour and the SNP, and both big parties, plus the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives, do better in constituency races.40 When consulted about plans to change the ballot paper format, most of the larger partiesLabour, the SNP and the Liberal Democratssupported a change to the two-vote format proposed by the Arbuthnott Commission.41 Critics (like Taylor, above) might argue that the larger parties wanted to thwart the eorts of smaller parties like the Greens, who used a `Second Vote Green' strategy prior to 2007.42 The Scottish Greens wanted any change to a two-vote ballot format to put the regional vote second, on the righthand side of the ballot paper.43 Greens in Scotland might have been imitating the German Free Democratic partya small party that for years relied upon an explicit `second vote' campaign strategy.44 Whether voters' likelihood to split their votes for such reasons, however, `is the result of confusion or sophistication is far from clear', according to John Curtice.45 Some voters might split their votes because they are casting a personal vote
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for a constituency candidate while voting for their preferred (and dierent) party's list. In any event, vote splitting is not discouraged by a two-vote ballot paper, as evidence from elsewhere shows. In Germany, vote splitting increased in the 1980s and 1990s, with 20 per cent of the voters splitting their votes in the 1998 election,46 while in New Zealand, 39 per cent of voters in the 2002 election split their votes, dropping to nearly 29 per cent in 2005.47

Education about MMP

While some Scottish voters had the knowledge of MMP to enable them to make sophisticated choices, others did not. The public education eort, conducted by the Scottish branch of the UK Electoral Commission, did not stress the importance and purpose of the two votes used in the Scottish Parliament's MMP system. Leaets distributed to households did mention proportional representation, saying that in parliamentary and council elections, `the number of seats given to parties and individuals aims to reect their share of the overall votes cast'.48 The illustration of the two-vote ballot, however, was geared towards showing voters how to ll it in, and said nothing about the role of the two votes in the process of achieving proportional representation. It appears that the Electoral Commission ignored focus group research conducted before the 2007 election in which participants `felt that there was danger in attempting to explain the complexities of the voting systems in too much depth', preferring `a highly simplied explanation of the systems, focusing on the process [of] voting rather than concentrating on the detail of how the votes are counted'.49 The `VoteScotland' website information50 focused on how MMP votes are calculated (in some detail) and translated into seats, rather than simply stating that the regional vote is very

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important in determining (with the constituency vote) the overall outcome of the election on a partisan basis. The Commission admits that its `2006 survey also shows that over three-quarters of respondents do not know which voting systems are used in the Scottish Parliamentary and local council elections',51 and reports that focus group ndings suggested that `confusion among voters would be likely to lead to spoiled ballot papers',52 foreshadowing what actually happened in the May 2007 election. Confusion was so severe during the run-up to the election that researchers found, in the third and nal wave of their study (directly after the election), that 62 per cent of respondents believed there was a new `system of voting' in place for Scottish Parliament elections, an increase from the prior two waves of the study, in which less than 30 per cent believed this false statement.53 This confusion existed despite a massive amount of advertising on television and radio, in newspapers and by post, as well as via road shows and events. The contrast between the Scottish and the New Zealand approach to voter education could not be clearer. The New Zealand Electoral Commission's literature and advertising54 emphasise the purpose of the two votes, with a `Two Ticks, Too Easy' approach: `Your party vote helps decide how many seats each party gets in parliament' and `Your electorate [constituency] vote helps decide who becomes your local MP [Member of Parliament]'. While MMP in New Zealand is somewhat dierent from MMP in Scotland, clearly stating at the outset what the votes are for, followed by something like the New Zealand Electoral Commission's statement `How do party votes turn into seats? Parties getting seats will get a share of seats in parliament close to their share of party votes' would describe the situation in Scotland well enough if modied to refer to regions, without being too complicated for voters to understand. The far lower number of invalid votes in

New Zealand should demonstrate clearly that it is possible to use a two-vote ballot paper successfully. In fact, the Scotland Oce initially proposed a ballot paper design remarkably similar to that used in New Zealand.55 Versions were tested in focus group research56 and the favoured design was almost identical to the New Zealand model, complete with an explanation of what the two voters were for at the top (a feature of German ballot papers as well). Researchers also reported that `the overall preference was for a single combined ballot paper rather than two separate papers'.57 The outcome of the Scotland Oce's consultation on the ballot paper also found that the `overwhelming view of those responding was there should be a single ballot paper',58 although in the process of consultation, the original New Zealand-style design was altered so that the explanation of the two votes' signicance was lost.

Conclusion
Public knowledge of the Scottish Parliament's electoral system appears to be inadequate. While some of those who cast `rejected' votes might have deliberately abstained, knowing full well how the electoral system works, the higher rate of rejection in areas of socioeconomic deprivation suggests that education was an important factor. The Electoral Commission's outreach eorts should have attempted to explain, in clear terminology, how MMP works, and this should have been one of its highest priorities. The New Zealand Electoral Commission's example, along with the two-vote ballot, demonstrate that MMP is a proportional systema fact not entirely clear to many Scots. Using correct terminology would be a good start; the term `AMS' should be ditched and replaced with `MMP' as soon as possible, as the Arbuthnott Commission recommended. The Electoral Commission
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could do this now; the Scotland Oce's reaction to Arbuthnott's recommendation left it up to the Electoral Commission to act,59 yet has only adopted the terms `regional vote' and `constituency' vote thus far. Whether these changes will withstand the onslaught of `rst vote' and `second vote', when single-vote ballots are re-introduced, remains to be seen. The reversion to two separate ballots may reduce the level of invalid votes, as appeared to be the case in London, but it will do nothing to increase actual understanding of how MMP operates. Indeed, this `dumbing down' of the process could further promote the false notion that there are two distinct electoral systems operating in parallel. The apparent fear of labelling MMP properly, as a proportional system, is hard to justify. Support for the principle of using proportional representation to elect the Scottish Parliament was expressed in opinion research in both 1999 and 2003: 66 and 59 per cent of respondents, respectively, agreed or strongly agreed.60 `Truth in advertising' might help the eorts to improve citizen engagement with the political system in Scotland.

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Notes
1 R. Gould, Scottish Elections 2007: The Independent Review of the Scottish Parliamentary and Local Government Elections, Edinburgh, Electoral Commission, 2007, p. 7. 2 J. Arbuthnott, Putting Citizens First: Boundaries, Voting and Representation in Scotland: Report of the Commission on Boundary Differences and Voting Systems, Edinburgh, The Stationery Oce, 2006, p. 42. 3 Arbuthnott, Putting Citizens First, p. 41. 4 BBC News, `Review under way on voting chaos', 4 May 2007, http://news.bbc. co.uk/1/hi/scotland/6623287.stm 5 Press Association, `Scotland: Poll hit by ballot chaos', The Independent online edn, 4 May 2007, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/scotland-pollhit-by-ballot-chaos-447402.html 6 BBC News, `Holyrood vote may face chal576 T ho m a s Ca r l L u nd b e rg
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28

29

lenges', 6 May 2007, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/6629093.stm Gould, Scottish Elections 2007, p. 7. Gould, Scottish Elections 2007, p. 7. Gould, Scottish Elections 2007, p. 49. Elections Review Committee, Greater London Authority Elections: A Report from the 2004 Elections Review Committee, London, Greater London Authority, 2004, p. 24. London Elects, Election Results, London, Greater London Authority, 2008, http:// results.londonelects.org.uk/Results/ AssemblyResults.aspx Federal Returning Ocer (Germany), Final Result of the Bundestag Election 2005, http://www.bundeswahlleiter.de/ bundestagswahl2005/ergebnisse/ bundesergebnisse/b_tabelle_99.html Chief Electoral Oce (New Zealand), New Zealand Election Results, Wellington, Ministry of Justice, 1996, http://www.election results.govt.nz See M. Duverger, Political Parties: Their Organization and Activity in the Modern State, London, Methuen, 1959; G. Cox, Making Voters Count: Strategic Coordination in the World's Electoral Systems, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997. R. Fox and R. Southall, `The general election in Lesotho, May 2002: Adapting to MMP', Electoral Studies, vol. 23, 2004, pp. 54571, cited on p. 548. Gould, Scottish elections 2007, p. 59. Gould, Scottish elections 2007, p. 50. Gould, Scottish elections 2007, p. 51. Gould, Scottish elections 2007, p. 53. Gould, Scottish elections 2007, p. 59. Gould, Scottish elections 2007, p. 58. Gould, Scottish elections 2007, p. 17. Gould, Scottish elections 2007, p. 120. Gould, Scottish elections 2007, p. 39. Arbuthnott, Putting Citizens First, p. 30. T. C. Lundberg, Proportional Representation and the Constituency Role in Britain, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007, p. 2. M. S. Shugart and M. P. Wattenberg, Mixed-Member Electoral Systems: The Best of Both Worlds?, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2003. A. Reynolds, B. Reilly and A. Ellis, Electoral System Design: The New International IDEA Handbook, Stockholm, International IDEA, 2005. Lundberg, Proportional Representation, p. 3.

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37 38

39 40 41 42 43 44

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Arbuthnott, Putting Citizens First, p. 41. Arbuthnott, Putting Citizens First, p. 32. Arbuthnott, Putting Citizens First, p. 41. Arbuthnott, Putting Citizens First, p. 42. L. Massicotte, `To create or to copy? Elec nder', Gertoral systems in the German La man Politics, vol. 12, no. 1, 2003, pp. 122. B. Taylor, `Gie's peace!'. The Reporters: Blether with Brian, 24 October 2007, http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/the reporters/briantaylor/2007/10/gies_ peace.html Scotland Oce, `E-counting to be used in 2007 elections', 9 June 2006, http:// www.scotlandoce.gov.uk/our-communications/release.php?id=3530 Arbuthnott, Putting Citizens First, p. 32. J. Curtice, `Proportional representation in Scotland: Public reaction and voter behaviour', Representation, vol. 40, no. 4, 2004, pp. 33042, cited on p. 337. Curtice, `Proportional representation in Scotland', p. 339. Curtice, `Proportional representation in Scotland', p. 330. BBC News, `Parties backed single ballot plan', 8 May 2007, http://news.bbc. co.uk/1/low/scotland/6634577.stm G. Corbett, `Scotland's election results', GreenWorld, no. 57, Summer, 2007, p. 7. BBC News, `Parties backed single ballot plan'. G. K. Roberts, `The ``second-vote'' campaign strategy of the West German Free Democratic Party', European Journal of Political Research, vol. 16, 1988, pp. 31737. Curtice, `Proportional representation in Scotland', p. 340. F. U. Pappi and P. W. Thurner, `Electoral behaviour in a two-vote system: Incentives for ticket splitting in German Bundestag elections', European Journal of Political Research, vol. 41, no. 2, 2002, pp. 20732, cited on p. 208. Chief Electoral Oce (New Zealand), Election Results. Electoral Commission (UK), Your Vote and How to use It, Edinburgh, Electoral Commission, 2007.

49 Electoral Commission (UK), ScotlandPoll Position: Public Attitudes towards Scottish Parliamentary and Local Government Elections (Research Report), London, Electoral Commission, 2006, p. 49. 50 Electoral Commission (UK), VoteScotland website, 2007, http://www.votescotland.com 51 Electoral Commission (UK), ScotlandPoll Position, p. 43. 52 Electoral Commission (UK), ScotlandPoll Position, p. 44. 53 TNS System Three, VoteScotland Campaign Evaluation 2007 Report, Edinburgh, Social Research, Scottish Government, 2007, p. 17, http://www.scotland.gov.uk/social research 53 Electoral Commission (New Zealand), Two Ticks? Too Easy!MMP Basics, http://www.elections.org.nz/mmp/ two_ticks_too_easy.html 54 Scotland Oce, Scottish Parliament Elections May 2007: Ballot Paper Design (Consultation Document), June 2006, http:// www.scotlandoce.gov.uk/uploads/ Consultation%20Document.pdf 56 Cragg Ross Dawson, Ballot Paper Designs for Scottish Parliament Elections 2007: Qualitative Research Report Prepared for Electoral Commission, Edinburgh, Electoral Commission (UK), 2006, p. 19. 57 Cragg Ross Dawson, Ballot Paper Designs, p. 12. 58 Scotland Oce, `Douglas Alexander announces 1 page ballot paper for May elections and new anti-fraud steps', 22 November 2006, http://www.scotland oce.gov.uk/our-communications/ release.php?id=3561 59 Scotland Oce, `Response by the Secretary of State for Scotland to the Report of the Commission on Boundary Dierences and Voting Systems (Arbuthnott Commission)', 23 January 2007, http://www. scotlandoce.gov.uk/ourcommunications/doc.php?id=79 60 Curtice, `Proportional representation in Scotland', p. 332.

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