Spoilt Ballot Party ruins Scottish Elections

As previously warned both the E-Count system and the complications of new voting methods is making a joke of the Scottish Elections. Anniesland has just declared over 7% spoilt Ballots. If this goes on the Spoilt Ballot party will come in either 4 or 5th in the Election defeating the Greens.

This is shocking, it is a travesty and makes us look like a third-rate nation. A total rethink will be necessary and I would suggest their will need to be an Official Enquiry.

Don't also forget with the rate of spoilt ballots the whole election could now be in jeopardy and open to legal challenge. The rate is now overall at about 4-5%.

Countries like Zimbabwe and Nigeria will just be laughing at us. This is just another low point for the Scottish Executive.

Vote early, vote often

According to David Hencke, the Guardian's Westminster correspondent, this Thursdays elections across the country

could go down in history as the point when fraud, corruption and mismanagement made a mockery of the electoral process in Britain.

The reason is because of all the new experimental voting and counting procedures which have not been properly thought out. Worse, some of the experiments have been based on laws that, ministers have just discovered, were not properly drafted in the first place.

I have already taken a look at the demise of the secret ballot here. The BBC has a report here that over 20,000 postal votes have dropped off the register in Birmingham since the last election, when massive fraud was discovered after the elections. And I posted earlier on the new E-Count system where I said

As this is the first large scale use of the system you would have thought the numpties on the Scottish Executive (Labour/Lib Dems) would have had enough sense to at least follow some of the calls of the Electoral Commission who asked for e-counting to be independently verified more than three years ago to boost voter confidence but nothing has been done.

So what confidence can we have in the election counts being correct, secret and fair. It's time to rethink this mess and get back to some semblance of fairness to both voters and candidates, before we become as suspect as countries like Zimbabwe or Nigeria.

Vote early, vote often

Doubts raised over e-count system

I see Scotland maybe on the way to an interesting count for the May Elections, with the new Electronic Counting system in use for the first time on such a scale.

As this is the first large scale use of the system you would have thought the numpties on the Scottish Executive (Labour/Lib Dems) would have had enough sense to at least follow some of the calls of the Electoral Commission who asked for e-counting to be independently verified more than three years ago to boost voter confidence but nothing has been done.

Even the company that produces the system has welcomed the call.

DRS head of elections, Sonia Anderson, said: "As an organisation, we would be hugely in support of an independent accreditation programme if e-counting is to become in the longer term an adopted technology that returning officers have the freedom to use as opposed to manual counting."

However, Deputy Scottish Secretary David Cairns said the system had been thoroughly tested and a hand recount was still an option if things go wrong.

So there we are a fairly new voting system and a new Election Count method, should make the tighter results a bit more open to challenge like in Florida.

Remember Labour has a wonderful track record with IT systems!

P.S. DRS the people who supplied the system might just want to check their website because as far as I can see they are in breach of the Companies Act as every company should list its company registration number, VAT number, place of registration and registered office address on its website as a result of an update to the legislation of 1985.

You'd hope an IT company might get their Website correct!

BBC NEWS | Scotland | Doubts raised over e-count system