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DONT LET YOUR VOTE BE A WASTED VOTE

FACT:

On the 3rd May thousands of people will pop out to their local polling station and give their REGIONAL Scottish Parliament Elections LIST vote to a Major Political Party.

BUT

They will not realise they are wasting their votes.

THIS IS A STATISTICAL FACT

THIS FACT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH PARTY LOYALTY

This can’t be true ? Can it?

What happens to these votes ?

Time to take

a second look

This truth becomes obvious to those who take a second look and begin to understand how the REGIONAL VOTING system works.

What? Is this true? You mean that-------

At the Scottish Parliament Election many well meaning loyal people will rush off and give both their Constituency Vote and their Regional Vote to the Major Political Parties which they support …..and……..

What they do not realise is that although their MSP constituency votes do support their parties their Regional votes are wasted and become lost votes.

How can this be true?

Time to Take a second look?

How can this be true?

Things can pass by us by that really deserve a second look.

In the last Scottish Parliamentary election over half a million people wasted their Regional List vote on Labour and the Liberal Democrats. For instance in Glasgow 77,040 wasted their vote on Labour. In the Central region it was a massive 106,000. Across the Highland and Islands, N. E. Scotland and Lothians Regions over 100,000 Liberal Democrat supporters wasted their vote.

Because of the proportional representation system voting for the governing parties on the regional vote is a wasted vote.

TAKE A SECOND LOOK & DONT WASTE YOUR REGIONAL LIST VOTE

Under Proportional Representation when the list seats are allocated a divisor is used. The number of votes the party gets is divided by the number of constituency seats won plus one. Therefore all the Regional Votes for Minor Parties who get no constituency seats are full votes. Regional Votes for Major Parties, who get constituency seats, are only counted as a fraction of the actual votes given.

EG: In 2003 Labour got 10 constituency seats in Glasgow. They also got 77,040 Regional votes and that was more than any other party BUT because of the system this was divided by 11 (10 + 1) and so they won NO Regional Seats. However a minor party with only 14,570 votes did get a Regional Seat.

The Moral of this story is simple.

If you support a major party which is going to gain constituency seats then give your regional vote to a minor party which you would be glad to see up there along side your own party. Because if your regional vote goes down the drain it is not you, but other people, who are electing the minor party representation. Think about it.

If you want to see what happened last time in your area then download the results given below. If you want to think about the regional vote then have a look at this speciman ballot paper given below. The regional vote is the one on the left.

Good people going down in a sea of wasted votes