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Election 2007: pressure builds for independent inquiry |
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Wednesday, 09 May 2007 |
Cross-party calls for an independent inquiry into the voting chaos at last Thursday’s elections have been rejected by the UK Government.
In a statement to the House of Commons yesterday, Douglas Alexander,
the Secretary State for Scotland, outlined the steps that were taken to
arrive at the decisions to hold the parliamentary and local government
elections on the same day, to combine the votes for the constituency
and list seats for Holyrood into one ballot paper and to use electronic
counting.
He said that the process was undertaken after careful consideration by
the Scottish Executive and the Scotland Office in consultation with
interested organisations, including the political parties. Holding the
votes on the same day was a matter for the devolved government, he
said.
All the parties, with the exception of the Conservatives who had not
responded to a consultation, agreed that a single ballot paper for the
Parliament election was the best option. The electronic counting had
been subject to extensive tests during 2005 and 2006, observed by a
number of groups, and no problems had arisen.
“When problems became clear in the early hours of Friday morning, I
immediately contacted Sir Neil McIntosh, the Scottish Commissioner on
the Electoral Commission and said that they should form part of the
Commission’s statutory review,” said Alexander.
But David Mundell, Shadow Scottish Secretary, accused Alexander of
displaying a “cavalier” approach to warnings that had been given but
that the Scottish Executive and Scotland Office “carried on
regardless”. He said that there should be a full independent inquiry, a
call echoed by Jim Devine, the Labour MP for Livingston: “It was an
embarrassment and we owe Scotland an inquiry.”
Angus Robertson, the SNP MP for Moray, said: “This statement has been
completely inadequate, there should be a judicial inquiry and he
[Alexander] should consider his position.”
Alexander replied that the Electoral Commission would enjoy the full
co-operation of ministers in its inquiry and that where issues impinged
on the Commission’s own role on the staging of Thursday’s elections,
they would be evaluated independently.
DRS, the company responsible for the electronic counting technology,
yesterday gave its first in-depth response: “The high profile combined
elections were extremely complex. Despite these complexities, DRS
e-Counting technology counted the votes accurately, transparently and
securely with declarations being made from 00:30 on Friday 4th May – if
counted manually, the results of the local government elections would
not have been available until several days later.
“In Glasgow City, the single largest count in Scotland, the local
government ballot papers using the STV election system were scanned in
just over two hours, and results were available for the returning
officer’s scrutiny soon after. This experience was repeated around
Scotland with some returning officers choosing to count all contests
through the night, and some choosing to break between the Scottish
Parliament count and the counting of the local government contests.
“Due to the closeness of one result in Aberdeen, a full Scottish
Parliament constituency recount was undertaken on Friday. The results
of the recount fully endorsed the original count, underlining the
accuracy, reliability and robustness of the DRS e-Counting system, as
well as the consistency of local authority adjudication.
“Five out of the 32 count sites unfortunately were initially unable to
output parliamentary final results. In consultation with DRS, the
returning officers at these sites decided to adjourn until later in the
day. By 10:30am on Friday all these sites had received a technical fix
enabling final results to be produced. All the parliamentary results
for these five sites were declared shortly after each count recommenced.
“At all times, vote data remained secure and both scanning and
adjudication was able to continue uninterrupted. Investigations are
under way as to the precise cause of these delays, but at this early
stage it appears likely that the unprecedented volume of ballots
requiring manual adjudication was the major contributory factor.
“DRS deeply regret these delays and the frustrations experienced by the
returning officers, their staff and the awaiting candidates, and wish
to thank all the returning officers of Scotland and their teams who
worked tirelessly in partnership with DRS to deliver these extremely
large and complex counts successfully and accurately.
“A number of press reports have incorrectly linked the DRS e-Counting
system with the high level of spoilt ballot papers. DRS would like to
make it absolutely clear that the electronic counting process was not
responsible for any spoilt ballot papers. The e-Counting system simply
provided a fast and efficient method for returning officers to identify
and record what transpired to be an unfortunate level of spoilt
ballots.”
Late last week, Alex Salmond said that if he become’s Scotland’s First
Minister, the first thing he would do would be to call for an
independent judicial inquiry into the election process to restore the
faith of Scots in the democratic process.
At a press conference, Salmond said that the inquiry would be
completely free of government interference and would lay bare the
reasons why 100,000 Scots were denied their democratic right because of
spoilt ballot papers.
He said it would also look at the role of the Secretary of State for
Scotland, the role of the returning officers and even that of the
Electoral Commission. He said the investigation would be far reaching
and detailed and would be the only way to restore confidence in the
democratic process.
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