Guidance for Returning Officers administering a Scottish Parliament election
The following guidance has been produced to support Constituency Returning Officers (CROs) and Regional Returning Officers (RROs) as appropriate with the practice and procedure of running Scottish Parliament elections.
The guidance has been reviewed in consultation with the Electoral Management Board for Scotland (EMB), the Scottish Assessors Association (SAA), the Association of Electoral Administrators (AEA) and Scottish government officials. It reflects the relevant RO’s legal obligations and what we, and colleagues across the electoral community, believe should be expected of staff involved in preparing and delivering the Scottish Parliament elections.
At Scottish Parliament elections, the CRO is the person who has been appointed as the RO for local council elections in that area; in the case of a constituency that includes more than one local authority, the CRO is designated by an Order made by Scottish Ministers.
As CRO you are responsible for administering the nominations of candidates at the constituency contest, the conduct of the poll, the counting of votes for both the constituency election and that part of the regional contest that is included within the constituency.
The RRO is responsible for administering the nominations of parties and individual candidates at the regional contest and calculating the regional result. The RRO will also be a CRO and will be designated by Scottish Ministers.
Performance Standards
In addition to our role in providing advice and guidance, we set standards and monitor the performance of ROs through our performance standards framework.
Our guidance to support the delivery of your functions includes what we expect ROs will need to have in place and what we would expect to see for the key outcomes of the standards to be delivered. You should be mindful of this framework in the planning and delivery of the election.
This guidance is directed towards CROs and the duties they carry out. As these duties may, in practice, be carried out by deputes and/or appointed staff, we use the term you throughout this guidance to mean the CRO and whoever is carrying out the CRO’s functions on their behalf.
Some duties at Scottish Parliament elections are the responsibility of the RRO and where this is the case we will explicitly refer to the RRO.
In this guidance the term constituency refers to a constituency at a Scottish Parliament election. The term region refers to a region at a Scottish Parliament election.
Throughout this guidance we use must when we refer to a specific legal requirement and should for recommended practice, but which are not legal requirements.