View Full Version : Electoral commission to undertake a full review
Just heard on Radio Scotland that the Electoral Commission have stated that they will undertake a full review of this election.
Many MSPs have stated that a full review should be undertaken but not by the Electoral Commission, but rather it should be undertaken by a separate body. There are, after all enough other countries worldwide who've been watching this proceedings who'd probably been only too happy to point out what has gone wrong :)
The fact that the Electoral Commission have stated that they will do this review -already- with little more than half of results in yet announced does raise a few questions in my mind.
more info:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/6623287.stm
'Urgent' review of election chaos
Thousands of ballot papers have been spoilt, officials said
An urgent review of the conduct of the Holyrood election has been ordered by the Scotland Office.
The polls have been hit by major problems with seven counts suspended and an unprecedented number of spoilt ballot papers recorded.
There are fears the national figure for spoilt ballots could exceed 100,000.
A statement from the Scotland Office said it was important that the Electoral Commission looked into the issues "as a matter of urgency".
It said: "Obviously, in various places, serious technical failures have arisen to delay the announcement of results."
The Scotland Office said these failures must be investigated by DRS, the company which operates the electronic counting system.
It said that the Scotland Office shared the public's concern about the high number of rejected ballot papers.
"The independent Electoral Commission will undertake a statutory review into the conduct of this election," it said.
"It is important that they look as a matter of urgency into delays in postal ballots, the high number of spoiled ballot papers, and the performance of the electronic counting machines."
Concerns have been raised about the decision to stage the Scottish Parliament and the local authority elections on the same day.
Voters were presented with two ballot papers and different voting systems.
The local authority elections are being held under the new Single Transferable Vote system.
The returning officer at the Glasgow Shettleston count said there had been 2,035 spoilt papers, while in Airdrie and Shotts, Labour's majority of 1,446 was less than the 1,536 rejected ballots.
There were 1,850 spoilt papers in Glasgow Baillieston and 1,736 in the Anniesland constituency.
The counts in Aberdeen, Argyll and Bute, Edinburgh, Eastwood, Perth and Tayside North and Strathkelvin and Bearsden were suspended until later on Friday due to technical problems.
The problem at the Strathkelvin and Bearsden count occurred when the computer system could not validate the votes that had been counted so far.
BBC Scotland political editor Brian Taylor described the situation as a disgrace.
Sonya Anderson, head of elections for DRS which implemented the automated counting system, said there was a problem with the "consolidation" of the votes.
She said: "As we scan the ballot papers we are capturing the votes and recording the fact we are capturing those votes.
"Once we have recorded all those votes we need to use a calculation to pull those results together and produce the results the returning officer is going to declare from.
"That process is taking longer than anticipated in some of the centres and some returning officers have decided because of the long wait that the staff and the candidates are experiencing that they are going to ask staff and candidates to go home while we resolve the issue."
During his acceptance speech as the new MSP for the Gordon constituency, SNP leader Alex Salmond criticised the voting arrangements and also earlier problems with postal voting.
He said: "The postal voting arrangements for this election across Scotland were totally inadequate.
"It is also the case that the decision to conduct an STV election at the same time as a first-past-the-post ballot for the Scottish Parliament was deeply mistaken.
"As a direct result, tens of thousands of votes across Scotland have been discounted. That is totally unacceptable in a democratic society."
David Henderson, who worked as an information officer at Thornwood Primary School in the Glasgow Kelvin constituency, said he had "no doubt" that the decision to hold two elections, under different voting systems, on the same day, had led to the high number of spoilt votes.
In a response to Brian Taylor's blog, he wrote: "I would say 60% of people coming into our polling station were unsure of how to vote.
"I'm sure the electoral commission will find that spoilt ballots were due to either to 'x's' or '1's' and '2's' on the wrong ballot paper."
Alex Donnelly, a voter in the Airdrie and Shotts constituency, said many voters had been told to fold their ballot papers despite national advice to the contrary.
Gogglebox
04-May-07, 10:20
If as many as 2 million people had voted - - -which they dont appear to have 5% of the ballot has been excluded
Throw in how many postal votes were not issued or issued in time thats a lot of error margin
I think the Council ballot will be worse for spoilt papers and really going by the trends of spoilt papers etc anyone of the councillors could get in whether thats what the electorate intended or not.
Imagine how damaging that could be locally
Never received my postal ballot, neither have any of the other Scots I know out here.
Frankly I'm not surprised they're calling for an enquiry. I should be surprised that they even considered introducing such an obviously inefficient system but since both English and Scottish govts. seem to make a habit of doing that and ignoring all informed advice - I'm not. Any form you complete that is to be scanned by computer stipulates a black pen. We were given hard pencils which produced a rather faint mark even after going over it a few times so that's one problem. The council papers required numbers to be completed - imagine the room for error there with 1 and 7 possibly confused, 5 and 6, 3 and 8. Any small eccentricity could be misread. Apparently many people put crosses where they should have used numbers - after years of voting with a cross it was obvious that would happen. Then you had to put the slip into the box face down so what happens to those that went in face up? And so on ..... ad infinitum.
Never mind, it will keep civil servants amused for months sorting this lot out.
Frankly I'm not surprised they're calling for an enquiry. I should be surprised that they even considered introducing such an obviously inefficient system but since both English and Scottish govts. seem to make a habit of doing that and ignoring all informed advice - I'm not. Any form you complete that is to be scanned by computer stipulates a black pen. We were given hard pencils which produced a rather faint mark even after going over it a few times so that's one problem. The council papers required numbers to be completed - imagine the room for error there with 1 and 7 possibly confused, 5 and 6, 3 and 8. Any small eccentricity could be misread. Apparently many people put crosses where they should have used numbers - after years of voting with a cross it was obvious that would happen. Then you had to put the slip into the box face down so what happens to those that went in face up? And so on ..... ad infinitum.
Never mind, it will keep civil servants amused for months sorting this lot out.
mine went in face up - unless there was a tiny note to this effect on the ballot box (which I certainly didn't see) I received no instruction whatsoever to put my papers in face down.
Printers and copiers have existed for at least 15 years that can print on both sides of the paper. I used to work for Xerox where quite a bit of paper was shuffled automatically, I fail to see why a counting system cannot cope with this eventuality and spit out problem papers so that the actual papers, not just scans of them, can be evaluated by a human.
mine went in face up
Mine went face down - well one of ours will be counted a a spoilt one then, emb123[lol]
Then you had to put the slip into the box face down
That has surprised me now !! after completing my voting papers, i turned to the ballot boxes and started to slip them in, one face up one face down, for no other reason than it was jus the way i had picked them up ! i did ask does it matter and i got a reply " oh no "
This has turned into a farce, what fools we must look ! any one done the figures to show what percentage of spoilt papers over all is ? compared with turn out
Given Scotland's population, I wonder... what percentage of the population will have been effectively denied a vote before it is decided that the election results are invalid and a re-election necessary ?
I suppose it depends whether Labour wins or not as to whether a re-election is called for.:rolleyes:
... any one done the figures to show what percentage of spoilt papers over all is ? compared with turn out
Only taking into consideration the few replies to this thread, we potentially have 2 out of 4 votes voided already...:eek:
Nothing in the " how to vote " page about papers having to be placed face down !
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/629/629/6511445.stm
One of the people calling-in on Radio Scotland commented that Scotland is not exactly a third world country that can't cope with adminstering a general election, and commented that with all the international observers it makes Scotland something of a laughing stock. Not a very pleasing thought to wake up to on the day after the election. Perhaps it's not as bad as that, but the whole things is a total mess.
I'm beginning to wonder if we are going to have to go back to the polls because they tried to save money and do three elections for the cost of one.
I would happily go back to the polls, if it is correct with over 100,000 papers spoiled !! that a lot of people and a lot of votes binned !
Bobinovich
04-May-07, 18:48
Like Solus I had one face up and one face down - it's incredulous with advances in technology that this could happen. What a shambles [disgust]
~~Tides~~
04-May-07, 18:56
27000 spoiled votes in Glasgow alone. We are a small country, there is no way this government can be called a democracy after this complete mess.
Also, I just dont understand the logic behind those machines. Seeing them on the TV, great big machines like photocopiers with each counting place having about 30 of them, how much would that have cost?? Seems the only winners will be the company that sold us them.
I was one of those 'thickos' who put crosses in the boxes for the vote for local councillor - just as I have done for years. I was never advised of the change when I picked up my voting slips at 9.50pm - I had had such a busy day I could not go sooner. Don't know why I bothered as I wanted to have my vote placed for local councillor (couldn't care about Scottish Parliament as it is a gross waste of money) - but I wasted my time.
The clerk was of NO help and all she could moan about was how tired she was as she had been up since 6.15am. I was quick to tell her she was getting paid - and paid well for doing the job, it wasn't voluntary! Maybe instead of moaning to me she should have reminded me to number my local councillor voting paper, not cross it. I will be more vigilant next time.
Apparantely there was a sign to say put your paper in face up but I never saw it, surely they would have been sorted the correct way up before being put into the machines, then maybe that would make too much sense!
27000 spoiled votes in Glasgow alone. We are a small country, there is no way this government can be called a democracy after this complete mess.
Also, I just dont understand the logic behind those machines. Seeing them on the TV, great big machines like photocopiers with each counting place having about 30 of them, how much would that have cost?? Seems the only winners will be the company that sold us them.
In Glasgow there was 9 Constituencys being counted at the SECC 8 had well over 1,000 spoiled ballot papers and in Shettleson over 2,000 spoiled ballot papers reckon there must be 15.000 spoiled ballots papers appoximately if not more. This is totally unacceptable and does not reflect the true intentions of the people of Glasgow who knows some of them might have been for Tommy Sheridan.
The school I voted in the chap could not be any more helpful and explain it fully. My mother was confused what to do with her very late postal vote so I reckon a lot of older people just voted with crosses on all ballot papers out of habit. They should make allowances for that kind of thing as long as the persons intentions were clear wither cross or number it should have passed at the manually checking point.
I saw no instruction to place papers down face down. I asked the assistant and was assured it made no difference.
Thinking about it further, it should not have mattered whether the ballot paper went in face up or face down. Every paper that was detected as having an issue (cross instead of a number, two crosses, etc.) was subjected to a visual check by an official. If they were only scanning one side of the paper (unlikely) then they would have been able to flip the paper round to ensure your vote was counted.
j4bberw0ck
06-May-07, 14:21
Apparantely there was a sign to say put your paper in face up
I hope not, because they were supposed to go in face down! Which also has the effect of preventing the invigilators at the count seeing what / who you voted for.
As for the use of electronic counting, the main reason was to allow the calculation for the Single Transferable Vote allocation of candidates. It's a horrendous system and you wouldn't want to try it with a calculator (http://www.compulink.co.uk/%7Erosenstiel/stvrules/model.htm).
I have no idea whether STV was the brainwave of the Scottish Parliament (or the people who defined how it would serve democracy :eek: ) or Westminster; nor do I much care. It seems hard though to blame the company supplying the technology when all they claim for their machines is that they're 100% accurate if fed papers the right way round with the right number of the right sort of marks on them.
As for disallowed / spoiled votes it was my understanding that where the machine couldn't make sense of a paper, it would send an image of the paper to a screen where the Returning Officer, his staff and if necessary the candidates could look at the image and agree whether to count the vote or discard the ballot. They'd then basically press a button and the vote would be registered or not.
Can anyone throw more light on that?
As for disallowed / spoiled votes it was my understanding that where the machine couldn't make sense of a paper, it would send an image of the paper to a screen where the Returning Officer, his staff and if necessary the candidates could look at the image and agree whether to count the vote or discard the ballot. They'd then basically press a button and the vote would be registered or not.
Can anyone throw more light on that?
As far as I am aware this was the case. For example, if someone had done 1,2,3 in the Constituency/Regional voting paper, they took the 1 as the equivalent of the cross as the intentions were clear.
Where the problems arose was instances on either paper where there were 2 crosses in one or both columns. In that case, there was no way of identifying intentions.
Powered by vBulletin® Copyright © 2024 vBulletin Solutions, Inc. All rights reserved.