Question about the local election voting system: "Should I rank all (or most) of the candidates?" Answer: YES, especially if you want to stop the Tories

In the wake of my April Fool (which alarmingly about 10-20% of people took seriously, even though I thought I had made it self-evidently absurd), I was planning to write a genuine guide to how the Single Transferable Vote system for the local council election works.  That's been slightly overtaken by the insanity of certain leaflets that have been dropping through people's doors recently, but there is one specific question that several people have asked me and that I feel I should respond to. In a nutshell, it's...

"I know I should rank all of the pro-independence candidates in my ward, but should I rank all (or most) of the other candidates as well?"

The answer is yes, and I'll explain why.  Suppose I lived in a ward which returns three councillors.  Suppose also that the SNP were putting up two candidates (a typical number in a three-seat ward where the SNP are strong), Labour were putting up one, Alba one, the Greens one, the Tories one, the Liberal Democrats one, and there was also one inoffensive independent candidate with no apparent stance on the constitutional question.  I would probably rank the candidates as follows -

1) Alba

2) SNP

3) SNP 

4) Green

5) Inoffensive Independent

6) Liberal Democrats

7) Labour

8) Conservatives

Most of those decisions are no-brainers.  I have the SNP ahead of the Greens because, at least on paper, independence is the SNP's number one objective, whereas for the Greens it's a somewhat lower priority.  The inoffensive independent is ranked below all of the pro-independence candidates, but ahead of all the unionist candidates, on the logic that a non-unionist is usually preferable to a unionist.  The Tories are ranked last because they're obviously the most objectionable party in all sorts of ways, and more specifically because it's important to reject their "muscular unionism" as emphatically as possible.  The only real dilemma is whether to have Labour ahead of the Lib Dems or vice versa, but I've given the Lib Dems the nod on the theory that Labour poses the greatest medium-term threat to the hegemony of pro-independence parties in Scottish politics.  It's worth giving Labour a ranking to help bury the Tories, but I'm inclined to think every other party apart from the Tories should be ranked ahead of Labour.

So why isn't ranking the pro-indy candidates enough to properly reject the Tories? Well, it might be, but only if you strike it lucky.  In my hypothetical example above, let's imagine that Alba are eliminated early on - which means that my vote will transfer to whichever SNP candidate I ranked highest. Then let's imagine that the two SNP candidates reach the quota and are duly elected.  That means there is one remaining seat to be filled, and it can only be filled by a non-SNP and non-Alba candidate.  Any surplus votes from the two SNP candidates (ie. the number of votes they exceeded the quota by) will be transferred to other candidates and will help to determine the winner of the final seat.  The upshot is that a portion of my vote will be transferred - but only if I gave a ranking to one of the candidates still in contention.  So if I only ranked pro-indy candidates, I'm banking everything on the Greens doing well enough to have a chance of the final seat.  If the Greens are eliminated, I've effectively abstained on the question of who I want to be the third and final councillor from the ward.

Maybe I'll be fortunate and the final count will come down to a straight fight between the Greens and the Tories.  A portion of my vote will transfer to the Greens, and I'll have done everything I conceivably could to freeze the Tories out.  But really it's up to other voters to decide whether the Greens are in with a shout.  If instead the final count is a straight fight between Labour and Tory, a portion of my vote will only transfer if I gave a ranking to Labour - and if I haven't done that, I've sat on my hands and thus could effectively have helped the Tories win the last seat. 

This is what is so bonkers about the leaflet and letter the SNP have just sent out.  There's no joined-up thinking at all.  The content of the letter makes clear that the priority of the SNP's campaign is not independence, but instead to "send a message to the Tories".  And yet it then goes on to recommend an electoral strategy (only ranking the SNP candidates and abstaining on all other rankings) that is tailor-made to help Tory candidates get elected.  That is not an exaggeration at all.  The SNP have huge influence over where the lower preferences of pro-independence voters go - either they'll help elect pro-indy councillors and non-Tory councillors, or they'll go nowhere and be wasted.  At present, the SNP are urging the latter.  If you think you can make any sense of that whatsoever, you're...well, you're probably drunk.

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To catch up with my Scot Goes Popcast interview with Alba candidate Lisa Keogh, please click HERE (video version) or HERE (audio only).