Electronic voting to return despite 2007 vote disaster

The Edinburgh Council by-election due to be held early next month is to adopt the same electronic voting system as was used for the last national election in May 2007, sparking fears that history will be unnecessarily repeated.

The election, due to be held on 6 November following the death of Labour councillor Elizabeth Maginnis last month, will be using a single transferable vote system (STV) which asks registered voters to rank candidates in order of preference.

This system is the reason why the electronic counting system must be utilised as the council chief executive Tom Aitchison explains.

“The use of the STV makes a manual count more complicated, staff-intensive and time-consuming than previous by-elections.

"It is likely that a manual count, held the following day, would take several hours to complete, depending on the number of candidates.”

However, concerns have been raised that a repeat of last year’s fiasco is inevitable. The 2007 national election was the first instance in which electronic counting and the STV system for the local government elections were utilised in Scotland.

Along with these new additions, the Scottish parliamentary vote was called for the same date. It was therefore decided that both votes would be placed beside each other on the same ballot paper despite the fact the parliamentary vote continued to use the original Additional Members System (AMS).

The results were unprofessionally hindered as 146,099 ballot papers were rejected – almost 131,000 more than were rejected in 2003.

The initial blame fell on the shoulders of Douglas Alexander, the then Scottish secretary and organiser of Scottish parliamentary elections for his role in overseeing the changes to the voting and counting system despite pre-election research indicating that four per cent of votes would be rejected; a prediction that later turned out to be true.

The investigation into the problems of last year’s Scottish elections, led by long-standing member of the Canadian electoral commission Ron Gould, confirmed Parliament and the public’s suspicions.

The report concluded, “there is very strong evidence to suggest that the combined Scottish parliamentary ballot sheet was the main cause of the problem.”

However, with the upcoming by-election being just a single event, Mr Aitchison has assured voters that the election should go without a hitch.

"An identical e-counting process was successfully used at a recent by-election in Glasgow, where the result was delivered within two hours of the close of the poll.

"I am confident that the lessons of the elections in 2007 have been learned and that an accurate result can be delivered smoothly via an electronic count."