Nothing like another bit of political corruption...

Labour MSPs battle change in vote system

Under the current system, 73 of Scotland's MSPs are directly elected as traditional constituency MSPs, and another 56 are "elected" [well, appointed] from regional 'top-up' lists in an allocation system that tries to ensure that each political party’s total number of MSPs reflects its share of the vote.

So if you're a thoroughly unpopular political party [like the Tories - Tories say winning one seat would be a success], and unlikely to win seats under a first past the post system, you'll still get some MSPs.

The thing is, voters have nothing to do with the election of this second tranche of "representatives": political parties are given/allocated a number of seats, and they then give them to whomever they want. So while normal politicians have to have at least some measure of popularity, 'list' MSPs suffer no such burden.

[This often means that the leader of a political party can ensure that they sit in parliament, even if local electors have had the temerity to decline to endorse/elect same.]

But if Scotland switches to STV [the Single Transferable Vote], then parties will lose a considerable measure of their political power, and people will be far more able to elect who they want [although the Greens and the Scottish Socialist Party are all against it, probably for good reason...], particularly the more awkward party members who speak their minds and/or otherwise fail to toe the party line.

In a democracy, anything that weakens the power of the party system is a good thing.