Serious questions for the Electoral Commission tonight as inexplicable ruling appears to have robbed the Greens (and thus the pro-independence camp) of two seats they should have won

Pro-independence parties have won 72 of the 129 seats in the new Scottish Parliament, which is a very handsome majority. However, it was agonisingly close to being even better – the Greens had two extremely near misses in Glasgow and South Scotland which could have brought the total to 74. It’s been brought to my attention that in both regions, a fringe party called “Independent Green Voice” won a strangely respectable vote share – it was 0.7% in Glasgow and 0.5% in the south. They outpolled several parties that have had considerably more publicity, such as the Women’s Equality Party, the Abolish the Scottish Parliament Party and UKIP. That raises the obvious suspicion that many voters were confused by the name and thought they were voting for the Green party – and that if they had managed to cast their votes as intended, the Greens would have had enough votes to win the two extra seats.

Now, you might think “tough, the Green party don’t have a monopoly on the word green”. But the problem is that Independent Green Voice are not a green party – they’re a right-wing British nationalist party (including members with a far right background) using an environmentalist name to hoodwink voters. In other words, this is exactly the sort of scenario that the Electoral Commission exists to prevent.

The Commission have become notorious in recent years for an overly fussy and officious approach, turning down perfectly reasonable choices of name, logo and slogan. (The Alba Party, All For Unity and the Scottish Labour Party were all victims of that, as were Change UK a year ago.) So their relaxed attitude to this subversion of democracy seems inexplicable and indefensible. There’s already plenty of anecdotal evidence that people did vote for Independent Green Voice by mistake, as can be seen from several replies to my tweet on the subject –

In a rush I very, very nearly voted for IGV. Thankfully didn’t, but was a very close call. It’s disgusting the name was allowed.

— Chenoa (@nerfgirl) May 8, 2021

Two young adult voters in my house were confused by that; my daughter got her correct choice by luck (she was too embarrassed to ask for help).

— Clare (@LiviaBurlando) May 8, 2021

My partner did this but we assumed was probably still a genuine green person at least. She blames having kids around and stress tyog et on and out. No idea how they get away with that.

— Paul Ryan (@pjryan51) May 8, 2021

My wife nearly fell for it until I pointed it out to her in the polling booth. An utter disgrace. And fully intended.

— Proud CyberNat (@proud_cybernat) May 8, 2021

On a different subject, it strikes me that the SNP’s controversial ‘reserved places’ system has had two very unfortunate effects. Most obviously, it’s cost Joan McAlpine her seat in the south, but it also means Tom Wills will not be an MSP in the Highlands & Islands. Having come so close to winning the Shetland constituency seat, there would have been a golden opportunity to function as a sort of shadow MSP for Shetland over the next five years, and by the time the next election came around he might have seemed like as much of an incumbent as the Lib Dems’ Beatrice Wishart. Perhaps the Lib Dems’ decades-long stranglehold on the Northern Isles would have finally been broken. The SNP have really missed a trick there.