Scottish Parliament and the AV Referendum

Written evidence from Mr Jim Tolson MSP (AV 02)

As a successful candidate in the 2007 Scottish elections, I am very familiar with the problems that arose from that election.

As well as being one of the many successful candidates with a majority significantly less than the number of spoilt papers in my election, I am very keen to see that elections are not just fair, but seen to be fair. This is hard to demonstrate effectively given results such as mine.

Once in the Scottish Parliament, I took part as a member of the Local Government and Communities committee. One of the early jobs of that committee was to review the 2007 Local Government elections - we could not formally review the Scottish election as this was a reserved responsibility, although there was much discussion with this point. It was quite clear from the evidence that was taken that most spoilt papers resulted from the Scottish election rather than the then new STV vote for Local Authorities in Scotland.

I, and many of my fellow committee members, are in no doubt that the combination of the two ballot papers led to confusion with many voters. I am determined that this confusion be avoided at all costs for next year's election to the Scottish Parliament. I am therefore very much against the inclusion of a referendum on the same day as the Scottish elections!

27 September 2010