Interesting item in The Scotsman. Some excerpts:
With the Nationalists already trailing Labour in the polls for next year’s crucial Scottish Parliament elections on the back of a disastrous Westminster campaign, party chiefs admitted that they had been forced to take action over the selection process. [...]
After the alarm [about possibly fraudulent membership rolls] was raised by the East Dunbartonshire Council SNP group, the party’s executive intervened to prevent anyone from voting in selection battles who had not been a member before 6 June this year.
With many SNP MSPs nervous about keeping their seats, there is a fierce contest to get high up on the party list for regional vote.
Scotland elects its parliament via a mixed-member proportional system, in which the compensatory (PR) tier is elected by closed list in several districts electing seven list members each. (See the official description–PDF.)
