Electoral Reform committee  In terms of gender, not yet. As Andy stated, all the parties have said that they're committed to trying to get closer to that. Their own processes for selecting candidates are designed to help that happen.

Electoral Reform committee  As I said, something new, a new institution like the Scottish Parliament.... Their voting system hasn't changed. It has been the count system since it was created in 1999. Turnout is actually up. This year, at the last Scottish Parliament elections, the highest number of voters

Electoral Reform committee  Almost all changes—in fact, all of the changes—have been made without a referendum. The only referendum we've had was a U.K.-wide referendum on changing the system of voting for the U.K. parliament. As I said earlier, that was the AV referendum, changing to the initial vote syste

Electoral Reform committee  The parties change their position as they see their support changing. Originally, in the Labour Party, if you were a candidate you had to choose whether you wanted to be a constituency candidate or to be on the regional list. You couldn't do both. But in the last election, Labour

Electoral Reform committee  It is mixed between the different parties, and the parties' own positions change. So I think there's now no party that says it will not allow a candidate to be on both, but ultimately, we're not really privy to how they go about making their selections. But it would appear to us

Electoral Reform committee  Until we introduced STV, we normally had a system whereby each councillor would have a relatively small ward to cover, unless you were in one of the rural areas, like the Highlands, or Argyll and Bute, and the islands, where you might cover a very large geographic area. But your

Electoral Reform committee  Anecdotally, it's been welcomed here and there was some disquiet that 16 and 17-year-olds couldn't vote in the Brexit referendum earlier this year in June. There was a very specific debate in the House of Commons and the House of Lords about that. I'm sure it would be of interest

Electoral Reform committee  I would say that over the last two or three years schools have taken on much more of a role in this area. Particularly, we've engaged with the directors of education for each of the local authorities, with School Leaders Scotland, who represent head teachers, and with the educa

Electoral Reform committee  That was particularly [Technical difficulty--Editor] during the referendum. If any teacher or educationist had been able to be accused of promoting votes for or against independence, I think their career might have been over. It would have been a very difficult area for them to g

Electoral Reform committee  The only thing I was going to add was that our schools have recently taken a role in making sure that young people, who now have the vote in Scotland at age 16 and 17, meaning students in schools, colleges, universities, have a clear understanding of the importance of registering

Electoral Reform committee  Most of the time voters aren't really given a choice about the electoral system; it will be a decision that the politicians take for them. The only time we've given voters a choice was in 2011, when there was a U.K.-wide referendum on moving to the additional vote system. From

Electoral Reform committee  I think voters are more sophisticated than we give them credit for. In my experience, particularly if you're setting up a new institution like the Scottish Parliament, voters are very open to considering a different system from the normal first past the post one. The Scottish Par

Electoral Reform committee  I'm sure they did. Certainly the very statistics you just quoted have been used in the media here to highlight the potential benefits of having more proportional systems for Westminster. Last year was unique, I think. But it does show that in a straightforward first past the post

Electoral Reform committee  Yes, regarding the referendum on independence, people had very, very strong views on it. But actually, in terms of running it as a process, it was really quite straightforward. A lot of what we did was focused on ensuring voters understood how to cast their votes, understood that

Electoral Reform committee  There was back in 2007. We did have a very difficult election then, because we were trying to run two very different systems on the same day, with a single ballot paper for the two types of MSPs, and a separate ballot paper for the council elections. With hindsight, that was far