Scottish Parliament Election Results - spoiled ballots
Story of the night, drama, but not quite what we were hoping for. Very high spoiled ballots and as dawn breaks…so do the electronic systems used to manage the results. Some shocks that the number of spoiled papers in some seats has been bigger than the majority of the win. Real concerns about whether people have been disenfranchised. Personally I also wonder what role literacy played in the chaos, it was a new system, people had to read a set of instructions on the paper. As any geek will tell you, users don’t read instructions, so either people were ignoring them because they didn’t realise anything was different about this election or more worryingly maybe they didn’t have the reading ability to understand what was being asked of them, really high levels of spoiled papers in the most deprived areas like Glasgow Shettleston. (Update: loved Christines: “Bottom of the class” - perspective from a teacher).
Results-wise, it’s not over by a long shot and still too close to call. Most of the Regional results cannot be tallied until all the constituency seats for that region come in. It sounds like most of the spolit papers were *empty* papers being returned, I wonder if people didn’t realise that inspite of the colour difference the parliament ballot papers constituted two different votes, people might have say filled in two boxes on one side of the paper closest matching their intentions and thought they were finished so didn’t need to look at the other side. Also claims of postal ballots not being received and problems consolidating results between the data centres. Representatives of the voting equipment were adamant that there was no technical problem recording and counting the votes at the local centres. Morning after the night before and it’s still too close to call. Labour largely held on in it’s central belt heartlands but lost totemic seats like Glasgow Govan. The regional results will be crucial only Glasgow has declared it’s regional vote so far and the small parties on the left imploded like Solidarity/SSP. No more Tommy Sheridan or Rosie Kane & co, it’ll be a less colourful place.
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