Democracy based on collective vote

Sir, – Anthony Brunton (letters, August 10) argues that a number of people didn’t vote for the Greens or SNP.

Of course he is correct. However, our democracy is

based on collective voting and therefore whoever ( jointly or otherwise) can gain a majority support takes charge. He complains that the Greens only got elected based on the list vote.

This is also correct, but he fails to appreciate that most of the other parties also only got elected on the list.

Under first past the post, which is taken as the gold standard at Westminster, the SNP would have won a huge majority of seats.

Having a solely seatbased system results in a government that, unless every constituency is exactly the same size – as is invariably the case in England – the people in eventual charge actually fail to gain a majority support for its mandates.

They see that having the most seats gives them carte blanche to do what they like, regardless.

It is a fact often conveniently ignored by the opposition that the voting system in Holyrood is radically different to Westminster and is designed to produce compromise agreement for policy enactment which benefits everyone, not just the largest party.

At the 2021 elections the SNP won 47% of the vote, but then needed cross-party support to gain a majority.

For Westminster 2019 the Conservative Party only gained 44% of the vote, and now do what they like.

At the same 2019 election the SNP won 48 of the 59 Scottish seats – a huge majority of 82%.

Nick Cole. Balmacron Farmhouse, Meigle.