The best local election voting strategy for Alba supporters

I received a query of sorts about the local elections yesterday, and hopefully if I keep it anonymised, the person who sent it won't mind me quoting him - 

"I am really struggling with what to do when it comes to the council elections my friend. Luckily, I will have Leigh Wilson at the top of my ballot and the former COSLA leader is now standing as an independent (Referendum friendly by all accounts) but I just can’t bring myself to put the SNP and greens anywhere high up and I certainly don’t want any of the Yoons close to it either. I know I should vote till I boke but it’s a hell of a conundrum to say the least. My folks, who do a toner of leafleting for Alba are planning to spoil their votes because they don’t have an Alba Candidate for their ward so they are stuck too. Is there any way we could get the LACU’s to distribute information on the best course of action so that we can try to facilitate the best outcome possible. I know that you don’t believe in “rigging the system” but surely we need to do something to send that message, to the Yoons and now (ffs) Bute House. I know your a busy man so if you don’t have time to respond, I understand completely."

This once again gives me the opportunity to clear up some confusion, because the issue of "rigging the system" or "gaming the system" is simply not relevant to any election that is not conducted by the Additional Member System, or to put it another way, any election that is not a Scottish Parliament election.  When I used to caution against attempting to game the Holyrood system, people used to shout back at me "don't unionist parties game Westminster elections all the time by urging tactical voting?", which completely and utterly missed the point, because "gaming the system" refers to something much more specific than tactical voting or informal cooperation between parties.  There's a very particular and idiosyncratic "bug" in the Additional Member System, which if exploited properly (something which is very difficult to do) could be seen in some ways as cheating.  It has a completely different character to it from the strategies that can be used in other electoral systems.

Fortunately, one of those other systems is being used in May for the local elections, so we can strategise away to our hearts' content.  From the point of view of an Alba supporter who wants to maximise pro-independence representation, I don't think there's anything complicated about the strategy that should be used, and it's as follows...

1) Give your first preference vote to Alba, if there's an Alba candidate in your ward.

2) Give your next preferences to any SNP candidates in your ward.

3) Give your next preference to the Green candidate, if there's a Green candidate in your ward.

4) Give your next preferences to any independent candidates or minor party candidates in your ward who are either in favour of independence, or at least neutral on the subject.  (The exception to this would obviously be if the candidates in question are fascists or nutters.)

5) This is less important, but there's arguably a case for then giving your next preferences to Labour and the Liberal Democrats, just to make sure the Tories and their "muscular unionism" are ranked absolute rock bottom.

Although Alba will be standing in a large number of wards, they won't be standing everywhere.  And actually, having been to various meetings, it looks pretty likely that my own ward in Cumbernauld will not have an Alba candidate.  (Before anyone asks, I would have seriously considered putting myself forward as a candidate if it hadn't been for the pandemic, but because I live with a vulnerable person, it's just not realistic at this stage to contemplate throwing myself into a campaign involving a huge amount of personal contact with a huge number of people.) If that's the way it works out, I will have no hesitation in ranking the SNP top in my ward.  I can't really see why any committed independence supporter would not do that - we live in an imperfect world, and you just choose the best option that's actually available.  I know anecdotally that there are Alba supporters out there (hopefully a very small minority) who hate the SNP too much to even give them a ranking, but what that's effectively saying is that other issues are more important to you than independence.  

For me, just speaking personally, independence always comes first.  If you don't want a unionist-run  council, you have to give your top rankings to ALL of the pro-independence candidates in your ward. It really is that simple.  If you don't do that, you are effectively abstaining on the question of whether you want pro-independence councillors or unionist councillors.  How does abstaining help?

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