Open letter to Scottish Youth Parliament Candidates - from Kirsten Urquhart, Chief Executive, Young Scot

November 17, 2023 Reid Aiton

Dear Scottish Youth Parliament Candidate, I am Kirsten Urquhart and I am the Chief Executive of Young Scot. I am writing to everyone standing for election in this year’s Scottish Youth Parliament election. I would like to offer my sincere and heartfelt apologies for the disruption to the election process. I am devastated that a technical issue with our Young Scot voting.young.scot website has impacted your experience of this year’s SYP election. I know how much time and effort you have all put into this. In early November, we began to collect the votes for this year’s elections. Earlier this week, our external digital supplier informed us of a technical issue with the website and told us that votes cast using a mobile phone had not been recorded. Votes cast using a desktop computer or a laptop are not affected. Sadly, the digital supplier could not fix the issue before the end of the current election period or retrieve the lost data relating to votes cast using a mobile phone. Whilst the site was updated so it could only be accessed on ‘desktop / and laptop computers, we know that this did not provide acceptable access for a positive voting process, nor did it ensure the integrity of the digital vote. The Scottish Youth Parliament board has chosen to pause the current voting period to ensure the integrity of the current election vote which I fully support. The technical issues have impacted voting activity only for those local authorities using the Young Scot site. We are working closely with SYP, and with local authorities, and I assure you that my team and I will work tirelessly to support the next phase of the SYP election process.

Kirsten Urquhart, Chief Executive, Young Scot