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The purpose of this paper is to provide an observational examination of the recent Scottish elections, within which an e‐counting system was employed to manage the increased complexity of the Scottish electoral system for the first time.

Observations of an ethnographic nature, supplemented by written documentation used for both training and public consumption during the Scottish election process.

It was found that the voting system for the Scottish elections had not received sufficient review or testing prior to the election; further that the design choices imposed by the DRS software did not support the actions of its users efficiently enough, or justify confidence in the dependability of the system.

That the deployment of e‐counting systems requires careful consideration; many of the issues raised in this paper are similar to those of the official Scottish Elections Review, to which our team provided input.

The Scottish elections were the first to allow members of the public to register as election observers, accredited by the Electoral Commission. As such, the Scottish elections represented the first large‐scale opportunity to observe such processes for the academic community.

The Employment Act 1988 is the latest legislation in the government's step by step measures to weaken trade unions and to some extent to weaken the encouragement of collective bargaining. The 1988 legislation has been preceded by the Employment Acts 1980 and 1982, the Trade Union Act 1984 and the Wages Act 1986. These numerous legislative measures make the law they cover both complex and confusing. In the resumé which follows, it is not proposed to treat the complex issues which arise as a result of the inter‐relationship of the various pieces of legislation. These have already been treated elsewhere. It is however proposed to examine the salient features of the 1988 Act in a succinct and brief manner.

In 1976, the Conservative Party expressed the view that trade unions were “… imperfectly democratic”. Subsequently they returned to this theme in a Green Paper on Union Democracy in 1983 which expressed strong reservations about the electoral practices of trade unions. The Conservatives were concerned that unrepresentative union leaders “misuse(d) the wealth and power” of their unions for their own political ambitions. They noted the growing proportion of trade unionists voting Conservative and contrasted this with the continued dominance of the trade union movement by leaders sympathetic to, if not actually members of, the Labour Party. From this the Conservatives concluded that the voting system used in union elections was defective.

As the democratic world debates and in some cases replaces physical voting with postal ballots and on-line voting, it is important to refrain from advocating a generic approach to the issue and in particular to distinguish between consolidated and unconsolidated democracies.

The paper argues that unconsolidated democracies are not fit for the introduction of non-physical (postal ballot and on-line) voting methods, which rather than broadening the scope of democracy may in actual fact be derailing it. The key reason for this distinction is the lack of political consensus for constitutional rules, the weakness of the rule of law and persistence of parochial and subject-based political cultures in many countries of the region, including Poland.

Replacing physical voting with postal ballot, attempted during Presidential elections in the summer 2020 in Poland, eventually failed and was replaced with conventional physical vote. However, the Polish case demonstrates that in the system with weak checks and balances, postal ballot could be used to consolidate illiberalism not democracy.

The paper demonstrates that further research on defining consolidated and unconsolidated democracy is needed. In particular there is a need to factor in the research on political culture into the definitions of democratic consolidation.

EU membership for Poland and some other Central European states – such as Hungary – failed to prompt the process of democratic consolidation. In fact the opposite happened as the impact of EU conditionality lost relevance. It is important that any change of electoral law in Poland and other rule of law violators in the region is viewed with great care and scrutiny.

The paper’s conceptual approach rests on the definition of consolidated democracy as put forward by Przeworski (1991) and developed by Linz and Stepan (1996). According to these definitions, Poland is not yet a consolidated democracy and as argued in the paper, it has actually experienced an expansion of illiberalism in recent years. The paper also posits that the concept of “consolidated democracy” should be augmented to include the existence of civic political culture as a necessary condition for the maintenance of a healthy democracy.

“The Trade Union Act is a major advance for the cause of union democracy” said the Secretary of State for Employment. Indeed it is, and no one can question the validity of this statement. It must be pointed out at the outset however, that, in advancing the cause of union democracy, the Trade Union Act, 1984 which is the third stage of the government's industrial legislation, has a twofold effect upon trade unions. First, it interferes indirectly with the internal affairs of the union. Second, it provides the means by which the trade union movement as a whole could be both strengthened and weakened. Both these will become apparent as the various sections of the Act are discussed.

In the last monograph an attempt was made at giving a short historical background of the trade union movement; at defining a trade union; at discussing the closed shop and at looking towards its future.

What are the risks of another ballot rigging scandal to rival that of the Electricians' Union 20 years ago? Is British trade unionism really open to infiltration by political extremists? Dave Grayston looks at union voting procedures and concludes that they are a good deal more democratic than those of their strongest critics, the politicians.

‘There is widespread concern in the country about the way in which trade unions are run” said Mr. Norman Tebbitt when introducing the Government's Green Paper on democracy in trade unions. He went on to say that “… public opinion have clearly shown the strong feeling that trade unions ought to be democratic institutions responsive to the views and wishes of their members.” He explained these statements by showing that in many cases the union executive fails to ballot its members on such major decisions as the choice of the leadership and the calling of industrial action. He talked of “… dubious decisions” being taken on a show of hands at mass meetings of workers “sometimes packed with outsiders;” of “… secret meetings at which unrepresentative minorities plot the trade union elections…” so that positions of power are held by persons who are unrepresentative of the majority.

In the Foreword to the first Annual Report of the Commissioner for the Rights of Trade Union Members, Mrs.Gill Rowlands says “As Commissioner I am able to provide material assistance to union members contemplating or taking certain proceedings in connection with … matters specified [in] … the 1988 Act. If assistance is granted, the applicant will know that he/she will not be placed at a disadvantage by a lack of ability to obtain legal advice or pay legal costs in connection with those proceedings.”