We have submitted this petition because we feel that the executive committees or similar governing bodies in charge of local authorities' policies and budgets do not always reflect the electorate's votes in terms of composition. We believe that “power sharing” based on election results would be a more practical method of creating consensus decisions.
The single transferrable vote system introduced for local government elections under the Local Government (Scotland) Act 2004 was intended to provide a fairer system and reflect the voting of the electorate. But this can create results where no one political party has an overall majority, which leads to coalition negotiations. The administration coalitions negotiated and formed do not always reflect fairness in terms of councillors elected from the various political parties being on the executive decision making body
We would like to see the existing legislation amended to reflect the decision of the electorate based on the percentage of councillors of political parties or independent councillors elected.
We consider that this would go a long way toward ensuring speedy resolution when there is no overall majority, would reduce the bitterness between political parties which can often arise, and should lead to more consensus agreements and would ensure that the views of the electorate through the voting system are fairly represented on the executive body.