United Kingdom, learn from Scotland's 2007 election debacle

Plan to ensure election night counts 'may be unworkable'

Electoral Commission criticises plan requiring vote-counting to start within four hours of polls closing on election night. Feb 10, 2010


Campaigners believe overnight counting is vital to retaining interest and faith in the democratic process

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The Electoral Commission said today that a government plan to ensure general election votes are counted on polling night may be unworkable.

It also appeared to criticise Jack Straw, the justice secretary, for changing election rules too close to polling day.

Straw said last night the government would support a Tory amendment to the constitutional reform and governance bill requiring vote-counting to start within four hours of the polls closing, and would allow Labour MPs a free vote on the issue.

The move, backed without a vote, comes amid fears voters could wake up the day after an election not knowing who won, after increasing numbers of local authorities indicated they intend to delay counts until the following morning...

UK to hold referendum on electoral reform

Feb 10, 2010

Despite the opposition of Labour rebels and the Tory party, MPs voted 365 to 187 to ask the British people to decide
whether the traditional first-past-the-post system should be scrapped.

Under Mr Brown’s proposed alternative vote (AV) plan voters would rank candidates in order of preference.
The candidates ranked lowest would be eliminated until one was left with 50 per cent of the vote.
Currently, just one-third of MPs gets 50 per cent of the vote.

Meanwhile, efforts by cash-strapped local authorities to end overnight vote counting –
one of the great traditions of British politics – in this year’s election should be banned, the House of Commons ruled last night.

System used in 2007 will return for 2012 council polls

Award election contract with caution – MSP
The voting and counting system now synonymous with the election night debacle of 2007 will return for the council elections in 2012, the Scottish Government has confirmed.
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The government’s determination to stick with STV guarantees the return of electronic counting, because a manual count would take up to three days.

The Scottish Elections in 2007

An Electoral Train-wreck. Scotland switched from hand counted paper ballots to computerized voting machines for the first time when implementing STV in May, 2007. They decided to use different electoral systems and voting procedures. The results of so many changes and a complex ballot resulted in a loss of 100,000 ballots and voter confidence. It is important to note that Scotland ranks better in literacy than the USA. Spoiled ballots impacted the poorer and lesser educated, but even some well educated voters had problems. On this page are news items about the May 2007 election, and at the bottom of the page some information on Scotland's literacy rate.

Not so much an election as a national humiliation

Scotland’s voters were treated with arrogance and contempt
Melanie Reid Times Online May 7, 2007 ...More than 100,000 people – around one in 20 of those who voted – had their ballot papers rejected in the election: a figure so scandalous that analogies with hanging chads don’t really begin to describe it.

The biggest poll debacle in the history of British democracy sees up to one in ten votes thrown out

JAMES KIRKUP The Scotsman

"SCOTLAND'S status as a modern democracy was dealt a grievous blow yesterday by a scandal in which up to one in ten votes in the Holyrood election were thrown in the bin uncounted.