There are a good few politicians that say voting for AFI or others in the regional ballot is "gaming the system". That is a predeterminable stupid position. Take the council for instance. Below is a sample ballot.

Does that ballot not say to list the candidates in order of your own preference? Yes! It does! Why? Because it is the voters choice who they give their second vote to.

You don't hear either side whinge about the fact that voters can choose to rank the candidates in any way they see fit (or choose not to vote for a candidate at all). I know this because during the council elections I stood as an independent.

I didn't get elected for the council because I chose to actively say to yes supporters to vote 1 and 2 for the SNP and then myself 3. That and the fact the ward I am in was reduced from 4 to 3 seats and it's the first election since the 1970's where polarised politics...

...resulted in not a single independent candidate got elected in Fife. But the point is the same. Voters were able to rank their preference as they saw fit, because it is their democratic right to do so. Just as a candidate it was my right to advocate that they vote...

...SNP 1 and 2 then me as 3 (that decision to run by the way held the unionists at bay until round 7 of the count assuring the election of an SNP councillor!)

In mid-scotland and fife. The SNP take all but one of the constituency seats. They decimate the competition. Over 120,000 people voting SNP, 70,000 for the tories and 50,000 for Labour.

But the SNP do so well, when those same 120,000 people vote SNP on the regional ballot, their votes go to waste because the SNP get penalised 9 times as much as the next party in the regional list - resulting in no seats in the regional list and 6 unionists elected by default.

The SNP would need at least 46,000 more voters to vote in the regional list to get just 1 seat. In a region which has a massive yes following, but also has the single largest orange lodge in the country, it's a straight split.

The SNP have zero hope of getting a swing of 46,000 votes. Therefore they are predestined to get zero seats in the regional ballot.

By comparison, however, the AFI team in Mid Scotland and Fife, of which I am a candidate, we could take our first seat with just 18000 SNP voters voting for us on the list. If just half of Yes voters in Mid-Scotland and Fife vote AFI, we can take 3 seats. If all of them...

...vote for us, we could take up to 4 seats. That's 4 less unionists.

In MSF we're going up against the likes of Murdo Fraser because he's an elected by default.

Willie Rennie will like stand in both the constituency and the regional. If the SNP take his seat from him in the constituency, then with a big swing to AFI in the regional ballot, we could very well take his seat from him.

What I am saying is that there is zero downsides to the SNP for yes supporters in Mid-Scotland and Fife, but there's a wide-open opportunity for every yes supporter in the region to take out up to 4 unionist seats in the area.

And as for the "gaming the system", just like the council elections, it is your right to list your preference of party, it is your right to choose anyone you want, just like it is in the council elections. The unionists are only flapping and calling it gaming because they know..

...it would mean their annihilation in Mid-Scotland and Fife and other regions!

This is just maths. The SNP cannot gain any seats on the list. Your vote, along with 120,000 others would be wasted in the second ballot.

So switch to AFI in mid-scotland fife and make it count for something - let's show the two parties (tory and labour) who would seek to deny us the right to have a vote on the constitutional question, that we're not going to stand for it anymore.