Former SNP councillor Mandy Morgan has hit out at the voting system that saw her lose her seat on Glasgow City Council - and claimed many residents 'didn’t understand' how the voting system worked.
Ms Morgan, who helped set up the Scottish Pantry Network with a branch in Ruchazie, lost her seat in the North East ward of Glasgow City Council to newly elected Labour councillor Sharon Greer - despite having more first preference votes through the Single Transferable Vote (STV) system which is used to elect councillors.
And some local residents are now asking if there is any way to appeal the result, while Ms Morgan insisted she would remain a champion of the local community.
READ MORE: Glasgow Council Election 2022: SNP win by a single seat as Tories suffer defeat
STV is an electoral system in which voters rank the candidates according to their preferences, with their single vote transferred to other candidates if their preferred candidate is eliminated.
The aim is to reduce the number of wasted votes and produce “proportional representation”.
On Friday the number of first preference votes declared in the North East was councillor Maureen Burke - 1532 votes, councillor Ruairi Kelly - 1305 votes, former councillor Mandy Morgan - 612 and newly elected councillor Sharon Greer - 447 votes.
Speaking about the result Ms Morgan said: “What I am being told by members of the community is that a lot of people didn’t bother turning out to vote because they didn’t understand the system.
“And some who did turn out didn’t understand that they didn’t have to rank everyone in order. There is a lack of knowledge as to how the system works because I came third in first preference votes and people don’t understand why I didn’t get elected.
“Had the system used to elect the local councillors been like First Past the Post I would have won on Friday.”
The First Past the Post system, used to elect the Westminster Government, means that the candidate who wins the most votes in each constituency is elected.
Ms Morgan now feels that there should be more education on how the system works.
She added: “People don’t understand how the STV system works. You usually vote by placing an “X” on the party and/or person they want to see elected. This is the only election that uses numbers.
“The electoral commission will need to offer some education around how the voting system works and what it means when you rank all your candidates and what that means for the result.”
Mandy is now going to put all her effort into maintaining her status as “community champion, working with local residents and developing the Scottish Pantry Network”.
She added: “I am going to keep working with all my local communities and I am obviously going to keep working with the Scottish Pantry Network and help continue to develop that organisation.”
Members of the Ruchazie community are now asking if there is an appeals process or a way to challenge the election result.
Local resident Brian Tollett said: “There was a lot of misleading information about the system. A lot of people are saying that Mandy had more points than the Labour candidate but it was the Labour candidate who got through.
“There are many people in my community who say that is wrong and that we should go back to the old way of voting by putting a cross on the person you want to see elected rather than voting in order of preference.
“I think it is wrong that someone else can get in on less votes than the original councillor who got the most “first preference” votes. I have lived here for 41 years and this was the first time any councillor had done anything for the Ruchazie area.
“A lot of people are quite upset that a councillor that was doing tremendous work lost her place and she had more votes than the councillor who is coming in. If that is happening across Glasgow and all over Scotland that is disgusting.”
