Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Finance and Local Government – in the Senedd at 2:04 pm on 23 June 2021.
So, in terms of the Scottish council elections, I'm not aware of any problems that we've had in 2017 or 2012, but it is absolutely the case that 2007 was a very difficult year for those particular elections, which did combine the elections for the Scottish Parliament and local government on the same day. But I think the consensus is that those problems arose mainly because they were combined on a single ballot paper, and introduced a series of significant innovations on the same day, so namely the single-sided parliamentary ballot paper, electronic counting and the new STV voting system for local government. So, I think it is incumbent on us to look at experiences elsewhere to learn from the positive, but also obviously more difficult experiences, which I think that Scotland seems to have managed to have resolved.