Electoral Panorama / Panorama Electoral

BBC News reports that in last Thursday's elections to the Scottish Parliament, there were 85,644 rejected ballots in the constituency vote, and 56,247 in the regional list vote.

These figures would produce a combined total of 141,891 spoiled votes. However, it must be emphasized that this total would include ballots that were invalid for both the constituency and the regional vote, along with those rejected for one vote but not the other.

In the 2003 Scottish Parliament election, there were 12,753 spoiled papers for the constituency vote, and 12,482 for the regional vote.

The rejected ballot statistics compiled by the BBC also help explain the large gap between constituency and regional valid vote totals. In last Thursday's election, the constituency vote total of 2,016,978 votes was noticeably lower than the regional list total of 2,042,109 votes. However, when invalid ballots are added to these totals, the resulting figures are 2,102,622 constituency votes and 2,098,356 regional votes, which are consistent with past Scottish Parliament election results. Nonetheless, spoiled papers constituted 4.1% of the constituency vote and 2.7% of the regional vote, well above the respective 0.7% and 0.6% registered in the 2003 election.

Link (includes constituency- and regional-level breakdowns):

Rejected votes more than thought

Update

On the basis of figures compiled by the BBC, the breakdown by region of valid votes and spoiled papers in the 2007 Scottish Parliament election would be as follows:

	Constituency Vote				Regional Vote
Region	Valid	%	Spoiled	%	Valid	%	Spoiled	%
Central Scotland	282,450	96.3	10,877	3.7	284,512	98.4	4,598	1.6
Glasgow	198,734	92.1	16,933	7.9	206,607	95.8	9,000	4.2
Highlands and Islands	184,801	96.6	6,478	3.4	185,773	97.1	5,506	2.9
Lothians	280,722	94.8	15,399	5.2	287,039	96.9	9,084	3.1
Mid Scotland and Fife	271,241	97.0	8,443	3.0	273,083	97.6	6,611	2.4
North East Scotland	256,464	96.6	9,128	3.4	260,006	97.9	5,584	2.1
South of Scotland	275,779	96.8	9,032	3.2	276,910	97.2	7,902	2.8
West of Scotland	266,787	96.6	9,354	3.4	268,179	97.1	7,962	2.9
Scotland Total	2,016,978	95.9	85,644	4.1	2,042,109	97.3	56,247	2.7

According to the BBC, ballot papers for the Glasgow and Lothians regions were redesigned after nominations closed to cope with the high number of parties and independent candidates competing for the list vote - twenty-three in both regions. Apparently, it was feared these would be too many on the ballot to allow electronic counting, so arrows designed to help voters put one cross in each column were scrapped in both regions. Consequently, voters went to the polling booths expecting to see one design of ballot paper and were faced with another - which may explain why the number of spoiled papers in these two regions was much higher than in the rest of Scotland.

Link:

Clue over voter ballot confusion