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Can someone not explain to the stupid paper guy that there is nothing wrong with the actuall machines. He seems to think that machines that count the votes have messed up. In fact it's simply a computer problem, which will be easily fixed.
Now the spoiled ballots and the postal votes, that is the real disgrace lets not lose sight of that.

Glasgow's count has gone fine.

I blame people in the villages who still point in wonder at electric lights for being unable to use technology.

Well, to be fair, if it could be easily fixed, counts would not have been suspended across the country

Tell it like it is Brian. It's a disgrace.

So much for technology tellers counting manually did the same job as these machines at the last election and with the exception of Argyll and Bute all results were in the same night/morning. As for the other voting problems..shambolic and politicians still wonder why there is a low turnout and no faith in the electoral system. As for computer systems how often has the government introduced computer systems which simply dont work. This should have been the most interesting election in a decade what we ended up with was a farce

Whatever next?

It's nice to know the powers that be treated this extremely important election with such care and professionalism.

I was amused when various commentators referred to the technology as 'counting machines'; isn't that a function of the human brain?

I am very concerned about the rejected ballots.

I worry that the rejected ballots are largely cases where a voter has not wanted to support any constituency first-past-the-post candidate and so has not placed an X on the right-hand side of the paper, but has only filled an X on the left-hand side of the paper.

This seems to me a perfectly reasonable choice. e.g. if I support a party (the greens or the SSP or Solidarity or Scottish Senior Citizens Unity Party) that is ONLY fielding a list candidate I shouldn't be forced to support a constituency candidate from a party that I don't agree with.

BUT I fear that (contrary to natural justice) if I only marked an X on the left-hand side regional list my ballot will be considered spoiled.

If so then the smaller parties that only fielded candidates in the regional lists have been duped. And the electors who supported them have been duped. And therefore there is serious doubt about the fairness of this election with the smaller parties potentially seriously under-represented.

If this proves to be the case then electors who know they have been dienfranchised and the list-only parties SHOULD legally challenge this election.

Andrew (very concerned)

PS As a Computer Scientist I have grave reservations about votes being tallied in a central centre. Its bad enough that software which could be deliberately corrupted is involved at all. I have never felt so unsure about the trust factor in a UK election.

Consolidation and tabulation...... this is a total mess.

How convenient.... particulary when this was always going to be a close election that the Scottish Executive managed to confuse the issue by allowing both elections on the same day, make a mess of the postal deliveries and further confuse the issue by throwing in a new system.

Consolidation and tabulation... I'm cynical and scunnered.

Brian.
I have lived in Scotland over three years now as a student of journalism in Napier University and in this time I have respected your excellent fair and balanced style of journalism. (You came and talked to our class one evening).
I am shocked that this is happening as this is a serious shot across the bough of Scottish democracy.
Keep your wise nose on this one and don't let them get away with this. (Remember the Forth estate)
I hope this isn't something more sinister from Whitehall.
all the best
Philip Crosbie

If I may digress from the blog subject, and bring up a point about the voting system in Scotland.

At it stands just now at 5:30am, the SNP have polled 461,450 votes to Labour's 452,057.

Yet Labour holds 28 constituencies to the SNP's 13.

Is it not about time we looked at full PR for Scottish Parliamentary elections? The current system is grossly unrepresentative, and loads the dice massively in Labour's favour.

Thoughts?

It's been this way for years and will probably stay this way, the same thing happened in the general election when Labour won more seats one year yet the conservatives actually would have won more had it not been for the way it is laid out

postal voting may have been a catastrophe, rejected papers a farce, but at local polling station, my partner whilst attempting to hand in my vote by hand, with our 2 year old daughter in tow {sleeping in her pram} struggling to open the main door to gain access, asked for assistance from a rather large polling station assistant. when he found out my partner wanted to hand in my postal, she was greeted with 'I've come all the way over here just for that!' in response my partner sternly quipped 'the exercise will do you good, as you're being paid for doing nothing' thanfully fir him, I'm working away from home just now!

If people are voting and those votes arent being counted, then its a scandal. Heads should role, but who will take the blame?

That's Scotland for you !! Could not run a car boot sale!!!!

For anyone who's interested, it seems that part of the technology for the electronic count is not held in each of the counting centres - it is in DRS HQ.

It sounds like there is some sort of fault communicating between the counting centres and DRS HQ.

Does anyone think it is ridiculous that DRS suggested sending everything back to their HQ? Why can't we have the server infrastructure required to support the count locally in each centre?

You surely don't need very much processing power to add up a few thousands votes. Come on DRS!

This is Scotland's Florida 2000.

Yes, Callum. Let's make it more complicated!

The SNP will gain from the lists, which in theory are to balance things up. They got 4 of the 7 list members in Glasgow, giving 5 of 17 total seats (29%) on the basis of 27% of the list vote.

Seems about right if the goal is proportionality.

@ Andrew Bissell, It is my understanding that, although there are two votes on one piece of paper, this is treated as two seperate ballots, but was combined on one sheet for, wait for it, simplicity! So a single vote on this sheet as you have described does not count as a completely spoiled paper, merely one spoiled ballot of the three you had to choose from. The other two still count...

Kenneth,

Just a guess on the processing problems - from a former IT Project Manager with experience running remote systems.

I would guess that the problem is the amount of data being sent from the counting centres to the central data centre. The system may have worked in testing but not now with the massive loads being sent at the same time.

Labour is still massively over-represented in Glasgow, and will be in Lanarkshire as well.

PR is simple - 1 vote, instead of the 2 we have just now.

Yeah, but as someone who works in IT myself, I have to wonder why on earth they went for the option of a central data centre in the first place.

We are not talking about millions of credit card transactions here. We are talking about a few thousand votes per constituency.

Why on earth couldn't this data be collated entirely locally, without any remote data links at all?

Sounds like some whizz kid at DRS thought it would sound cool to have a fancy-sounding 'data centre', when in fact the amount of data we are talking about could have easily been collated in a locally held database.

That woman Anderson from DRS didn't seem to have any answer for this.

As someone who votes in the US quite a lot, in a state which has a lot of voter referendums (Oregon, on the west coast, a "blue" state), trust me when I say that you folks are lucky to only have two contests on your ballot. Although in defense of "postal voting", Oregon is an entirely vote-by-mail state (the only one in the US) and it has increased our turnout (from about average 70% to average 85-90%) and decreased fraud. You folks will get it right eventually.

Dear John Thomson,

Thanks for your input.

I am just hoping that

a. your understanding of this is correct
b. someone explained it properly to the software engineers who wrote the "tabulation" software (you know - the software that has so delayed the counts!)

if b. was not done right then a paper that was deemed "spoiled'on the right-hand (constituency) side may never have been put forwards for its valid left-hand (regional list) side to be considerd.

Here's hoping - but not very hopefully.

Pessimistic Computer Scientist depressed by a night when I feel we, the people, have had our election partially stolen from us.

Andrew

As a software developer I agree with what people earlier have said about poor design decisions for the vote counting systems. The simplest possible system that fulfils the requirements is normally the best design

In this case the objective is to accurately count the vote, I can see no possible requirement for any sort of central data center, it seems to make the whole system much more complicated than it need be.

One additional problem that I found is that, when I went to vote, the polling station staff member who gave me my ballot paper 'jokingly' outlined completely wrong instructions on how to fill out the form including the final instruction of tearing the ballot paper up; before then asking "Do you believe me?".

Only after this stupid joke was I then given the correct instructions.

If this experience was repeated elsewhere then undoubtedly people were confused on how to vote.

I accept that sitting in a polling station all day may be boring, but this sort of joking must be prevented at all costs.

So much for Scotland. Do we English really want to be associated with such a shambles? The words P up and distillery spring to mind.

I was working as a poll clerk and information officer yesterday. Additional staff were brought in to help explain the new voting system to people. But a lot of people didn't want advice and seemed to be a bit put out if you offered it. So despite a lot of publicity, posters, extra staff on hand, there is only so much you can do. If people were not sure about the new rules, they only had to ask or read the guidance put up all over the hall, but if they don't look for help you can hardly follow them into the booth to see how they are getting on.

The voting procedure was explained to me when I went to the polling station. For the local government ballot I was to put numbers 1 - 6 in order of preference. Ten seconds after being told that, I went into the booth and put a cross next to my preferred candidate.
Cos that's how you vote isn't it?
So if, having been told (and understood) the instructions I still messed it up, how many other people have done likewise.
A lot, by the look of the news this morning.

My observations and conversations lead me to believe that in addition to the pencil on a string, an eraser on a string should be available to correct any errors and possibly reduce the numbers of wasted papers.

The responsibility for this voting debacle is clearly down to Labour and the Liberal Democrats, true to their track record they did not listen to the voices who told them the voting choices and system were suspect and not proven; such a verdict delivered in courts permit those charged to walk free, the people of Scotland may not be happy to let such wrong doers walk Scot Free.

Yeah, but as someone who works in IT myself, I have to wonder why on earth they went for the option of a central data centre in the first place.

We are not talking about millions of credit card transactions here. We are talking about a few thousand votes per constituency.

Why on earth couldn't this data be collated entirely locally, without any remote data links at all?

Sounds like some whizz kid at DRS thought it would sound cool to have a fancy-sounding 'data centre', when in fact the amount of data we are talking about could have easily been collated in a locally held database.

That woman Anderson from DRS didn't seem to have any answer for this.

Would the last person to leave Scotland please put out the bins

We have just witnessed one of the saddest days in Scottish history; a day we all saw coming and did nothing about, in a history with more than enough sadness already. Now we are to have an official enquiry into the Scottish parliamentary and regional elections, a reaction which implies a staggering ignorance of how serious is the situation into which we've all been placed and by which we've all effectively been disenfranchised.

I bear no standard for any political party - finding them, by definition, undemocratic - but it requires little intellect to surmise that those brought to power will be delighted with the new systems, while those disadvantaged will be baying for further reform.

It might reasonably be posited that all of the people involved in this sorry affair - those who re-drew the boundaries; those who imposed proportional representation; those who commissioned electronic voting; and those who decided to run both elections on the same day - have conspired to commit no less than an act of treason upon the Scottish people and should be held accountable for their actions.

By saying "There was a huge challenge for voters in filling in the ballot forms" it appears to me as if you are whipping up dissent as the instructions were simple and clear. Why are you doing this ? Given the number of people who successfully managed to fill them in, you are not reporting impartially. Why not ?

See the sample papers used to inform people of the procedure -

Just a final word on the 'burach'... At our Polling Station we heard a wee girl (about 10) saying to her mum repeatedly ...'Mum it says here don't fold the paper!, Mum don't fold the paper!!!! '

Sums it up , I think.

We were all nervous about the new forms, but they couldn't have provided more info about them.They were straightforward, with clear instructions. One of the attendants at a Polling Station described on radio helping people and guiding them....Many of the voters blithely carried on, filling in the wrong boxes and folding their papers to his total frustration! Once again we've to dumb down to the lowest common denominator...to people with the attention span of a gNAT.(sorry)(And I'm certainly NOT decrying any people who might have been nervous about the forms). The key issue perhaps is to be 'mindful'.... take time, read the instructions and then complete the form.
We have to get a grip here....,it's why school exams are simpler... It's why the Higher Art, which used to contain questions from Ancient Egypt to the present day now starts from 1750, so all the Renaissance masters are oot the windae so to speak!! It's why children doing Highers in languages can take a dictionary in....
Phew...
And that reminds me when's Sean moving back then?

As is usually the case, no one cause is to blame. This seems like many things went wrong. The DRS system is claimed to have worked well for many years in other countries, but has it ever been used in complicated elections like this?
The Scottish Executive didn't choose to use the system, the Scottish Office in Westminster made that decision. Why?
For years the public have been voting with crosses, changing to numbers is bound to cause confusion.
Having two elections done by a new method mixing crosses and numbers was asking for trouble and our government were well warned about this last year, but they went ahead anyway.
After the debacle of the Parliament building and the laughing stock made of our political system I am furious that our Government has done it again.
They should hang their heads in shame.

I can back up No.6. I was at the Edinburgh count and they were doing exactly that. Where someone had voted for one party on the regional list but had not placed an x next to a constituency candidate, their vote was marked 'void for uncertainty'. Members of the various parties were huddled round the computers, so this must have been agreed to (!)

I'm aware there's a tendency to throw blame left right and centre when this kind of thing happens, but it really is an utter scandal that these voters were ignored.

Does anyone think that the result means the end of the Union?

Re Postal votes - the thing that bothers me is that I spoiled my paper by folding it into the envelope - I read that papers were to go into the boxes unfolded. But the envelope wasn't big enough to take the paper unfolded. Would've posted this sooner, but this page wouldn't work properly - overload?

All the anti Scottish comments on competence amuses me. Conduct of elections has not been devolved so a Westminster minister must have approved everything that caused the problem. I am amazed at the dignity of Alex Salmond calmly stating he would seek a judicial enquiry. Mr Blair will not decide these terms of reference. Conspiracy?

With regard to the comment about all the data going back to DRS HQ on the night of the count. Each count venue had its own dedicated server.

Also folding the postal ballots did not spoil your vote.