Voters in a Fife community excluded from the constituency with which it has historic links will show their anger in the ballot box next week.
Many residents in Largo and Lundin Links intend to give up their votes and use their ballot papers to protest against the area’s inclusion in the Mid Fife and Glenrothes rather than the North-East Fife constituency.
The campaign group set up to fight the boundary revision which left Upper Largo, Lower Largo and Lundin Links out of North-East Fife constituency is reminding residents that spoiling their papers is a legitimate way to show their condemnation.
There was strong opposition when the Boundary Commission for Scotland proposed redrawing the constituency map, as voters in Largo and Lundin Links felt their communities had more in common with rural north-east Fife than the more urban area of Glenrothes.
Sheriff Principal Alistair Dunlop said the local inquiry he conducted into the revision in 2008 had “thrown up as strong an example of such local ties as one is likely to find”.
Despite his conclusions, the revision was approved. The Holyrood election on May 5, the first since the boundary change, has reignited the controversy.
Andrew Duncan, spokesman for the group LARGOINEF, said they wanted to remind the electorate in Largo and Lundin Links that it was each individual’s right to voice their opposition by writing ‘Largo is in North East Fife’ instead of marking an X.
He said, “We are well aware of the sensitivities which surround any statement which can impact on an individual’s actions in the polling booth but it is patently obvious that the Boundary Commission didn’t get the message on this issue, nor a proper measure of the strength of feeling over it in the communities.
“Over the past two weeks it has become very clear that many residents have already made up their minds to spoil their ballot papers.
“To others who have always voted and will do so again this time out of civic duty, we are not encouraging nor recommending that they spoil their ballot papers but pointing out that they have a legitimate right to do so as a form of protest.
“Judging by the near invisible campaigning being undertaken by the political parties as a whole in the area it does seem as if the candidates at least have got the message which the Boundary Commission failed to grasp.”
One of the area’s councillors, Marilyn Whitehead, said, “LARGOINEF was an extremely well supported campaign. The community felt badly let down by the decision.
“The call to register their dissatisfaction of having to vote in a constituency with which they feel they have no ties is completely understandable.”
“If this message is conveyed to commission by a large number of spoilt papers being received from this area then it is perhaps, now, the only way for this community to register its anger and disappointment.”