You read that right, folks. It's 2021 and we've got a map from the future. I'm very excited to share the blog's first speculative map, as well as its first non-USA map. This one comes to us from Twitter user @bdn0369, who proposes a brand new electoral system for Scotland after its independence in 2023. I recommend reading their breakdown of the political parties later in this Twitter thread:
#ElectionTwitter These are the 2026 Scottish Parliament elections. Scotland, after achieving independence in 2023, formed its own 100-seat parliament with a proportional regional list voting system. (1/4) pic.twitter.com/nc27e8mwQ1
— ben 🏳️🌈 (@bdn0369) May 23, 2021
A proportional regional list system is a system where the country is divided into a number of electoral regions. Within those regions, each party has a list of candidates, and in a nationwide vote, everyone chooses a party, rather than an individual candidate. Within each electoral region candidates are elected from the tops of their parties' lists in proportion to the percentage of the vote earned by that party in that region.
This is quite different from Scotland's current Parliament, which is elected via a mixed-member proportional system, or Scotland's representation in the UK Parliament, which is based on a first-past-the-post system traditional to British-style governments. @bdn0369 has maintained the current electoral regions, although seats are allocated by population rather than each getting seven members.
