(MNVA note: Scotland uses IRV)

Melanie Reid, London TimesOnline, May 7, 2007

As one man commented caustically on the BBC website, it wasn’t rocket science. No, but neither was it exactly straightforward. In the polling station last Thursday morning, confronted with two ballot papers, three different columns of names and the requirement that I use crosses and numbers in different places, I readily confess that the new Scottish voting system made me pause in my tracks.

If I’m having to think about this, I pondered, how will other people cope? Does that sound dreadfully arrogant? But there was I, one of the mistresses of the written universe, able to negotiate the most intricate of bank overdraft requests, surprised by how unsure I was; and there was I seeking reassurance from the officials before putting pen to paper.

As indignation (and a sense of national humiliation) grows over the polling fiasco in the elections, several friends have admitted, a little shamefacedly, that they really weren’t sure what to do, either. These weren’t stupid people. One of them, remarkably, was the political editor on a Scottish newspaper, and if he had doubts, then perhaps that says it all.

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. Their votes were rejected because the forms were too confusing for them (let’s leave aside the tiny minority who spoilt their papers as a form of political protest). What is now crystal clear is that the poorer and more ill-educated the voters were, the more likely they were to put the wrong marks in the wrong places, and unwittingly invalidate their forms.

In the constituency of Glasgow Shettleston, an area in the east end of the city that routinely tops all the poverty and deprivation indices for the UK, there were 2,035 rejected ballots, representing almost 12 per cent of the turnout. The percentage was similar in Glasgow Baillieston, an area of near similar deprivation, where there were 1,850 rejected papers.

In the election of 1999, using the more standard voting form, the number of spoiled papers was under 1 per cent, a figure that Dr Ken Ritchie, the chief executive of the Electoral Reform Society, believes has now increased tenfold.

This time round, across the industrial heartland of the West of Scotland, rejected ballots averaged about 1,000 per constituency. In Glasgow Anniesland, there were 1,736 rejected papers, a figure almost as big as the number of successful votes cast for the Lib Dems and the Conservatives put together. In Airdrie and Shotts the number of rejected papers (1,536) was larger than the majority by which the Labour candidate won, which was 1,446. These, whichever way you look at them, are simply shocking figures.

Naturally, the reverse holds true. In areas of greater affluence, where people are wealthier, healthier and better educated, the trend was reversed. In Roxburgh and Berwickshire, for instance, which was taken by the Conservatives, the number of rejected papers was just over 400. On the traditionally mannered Western Isles, the number was around 500.

The conclusion is unavoidable: the ballot forms were simply too much for the country’s least favoured citizens. Unintentionally, in going to the polls the way it did, Scotland asked its people to sit a national intelligence test, and an awful lot of the disadvantaged failed. This, at the very least, is a desperately sad indication of how detached the bureaucratic classes are from reality. The ill-designed ballot papers disgracefully disenfranchised those who are already the most powerless and voiceless in society, leading one to suggest that, if the much touted “best small country in the world” aspires to be a model for democracy, then it urgently needs to find a way that its people – all its people – can express their wishes.

Those who are least likely to vote, will, given this experience, be even less likely to do so in the future. In Shettleston last week the turnout was only 33 per cent, two points down on 2003. And this against a national trend suggesting a much bigger turnout on Thursday than in 2003.

The need for an inquiry is urgent. We face a situation of historic uncertainty as the Scottish National Party, with a wafer thin majority of one vote – and who knows if that could have been nullified by more user-friendly ballot papers? – tries to form a coalition or start minority government. Suggestions are swirling around of legal challenges to some of the election results because of the rejected papers. And undoubtedly the almost total annihilation of independent, pensioner, Socialist and Green party candidates this time round, removing the zany, rainbow-coloured element in the Scottish Parliament, can be laid partly at the door of the wasted votes. Given these factors, we would be unwise to ignore the prospect of another election happening sooner rather than later.

There is no point in blaming the e-counting machines for the breakdown in democracy. Yes, there were malfunctions on the night, but so what? We are all now alert to the empty promise of efficiency that computerising anything brings. And, yes, the ballot papers were designed for the scanners, rather than the voters, and that didn’t help. But it wasn’t the key issue.

The blame for the contemptuous treatment of the voters lies with the Scotland Office and Scottish Executive, who between them decided to defy the recommendations of the Arbuthnott Commission review of the voting system (appointed, let’s not forget, to make polling in Scotland fairer and simpler) and hold both the Scottish parliamentary elections and the local authority elections on the same day.

Hence the two ballot papers, one requiring crosses, one numbers; hence the confusion. Voters were not helped by the rules that allowed the Nationalists to put “Alex Salmond for First Minister” instead of “SNP” on every ballot paper, muddying the water between personal and party votes. Bewildering? Imagine how Scotland’s thousands of elderly and barely literate felt.