£40m cost of Scottish election fiasco revealed

Published on Saturday 12 April 2008 19:37

LAST year's Scottish election fiasco cost taxpayers more than double the successfully run vote in 2003, new figures show.

Nearly 150,000 ballot papers were lost last May amid scenes of chaos as the public were asked to vote in two different elections using three different forms of voting system.

But it has now emerged that the vote cost nearly 40m to administer, compared to the 17.15m cost of the same vote in 2003, which went off without a hitch. The SNP – which uncovered the figures – last night described the findings as "astounding" and blamed Labour ministers in Edinburgh and London for throwing around taxpayers' cash.

The figures show that 9m of the 40m cost was given to DRS, the company which provided the electronic counting machines at last year's poll. A further 3.5m was spent introducing the electronic system. The machines were used for the first time because of the new single transferable vote system which was used for the council elections.

The independent report by elections expert Ron Gould has now recommended that electronic voting be ditched for the 2011 elections, unless the problems that beset the system last year are resolved

SNP MSP Keith Brown said that in total the 2007 Holyrood and local government elections had cost 39.26m.

He said: "The amount spent on the last elections was astounding, and it is only now finally coming to light."

He blamed the Scotland Office and the previous Scottish administration at Holyrood which, he said, had "tripped themselves up in their rush to change rules and regulations at the last minute".

However, a Scotland Office spokesman said: "Much of this spending relates to the introduction of electronic counting, which was only brought in to cope with the single transferable vote system being used for the local government elections."

He explained: "The Scotland Office is only responsible for the Scottish Parliament elections, not the local government elections. The decision to move to STV was made by the Scottish Parliament, not the Scotland Office, but we agreed to combine the elections on the same day – and incurred the costs of doing so – in order to avoid two different counting systems."

The spokesman added: "Running two elections on the same day using these two different systems was always likely to incur larger costs, as all those involved well know."