Everyone eligible to vote on Thursday May 3 this year is being encouraged to do so by VoteScotland, a politically neutral, public information campaign.

Voters will have two separate ballot papers to mark.

One will be for the election of Glasgow City Councillors. This will use a new system called Single Transferable Vote. By marking 1 against the candidate the voter wants as their first choice and 2 against the voter’s next preference and so on, the outcome is considered by electoral experts to give a fairer reflection of what voters want rather than the ‘first past the post’ system which has been in use until now.

This form of proportional representation (PR) is commonly used in many organisations such as trade unions and in Europe. It is the first time that the Single Transferable Vote system has been used in Scottish local government elections. The result will be groups of three of four councillors elected to new ‘multi-member wards’ which will cover areas similar to the Community Planning Partnership areas.

The second ballot paper will be for candidates for the Scottish Parliament.

On that colour coded single ballot paper the voter will have to do two things: 1.choose a constituency MSP and 2. choose seven regional members from a list of political parties or individual candidates. With this double vote it is considered that voters’ wishes in respect of their preferred political party and of their preferred candidates, will give a fairer result. It combines proportional representation with the Additional Member System (AMS).

 Secretary of State for Scotland, Douglas Alexander said, ‘By introducing a single ballot paper for the May elections, we are making things easier for voters to mark their papers for the Parliamentary elections. They will be able to see the importance of both their votes – regional and constituency. Results will be quicker because we are making good use of the e-counting system to scan a single paper instead of two papers.’

New safe-guards to be introduced include voters signing for their ballot paper and having the right to check if their postal vote has been received.