Holyrood result to be delayed by London

THE result of this year's Scottish parliamentary elections is likely to suffer unprecedented delay because of the decision to hold a referendum on voting reform on the same day, Scotland on Sunday can reveal.

It means the result will not be announced until the Saturday, instead of the usual Friday announcement following a night of drama.

More than half of Scotland's local authorities have warned that they will not be able to start tallying up votes until the day after polls close on 5 May due to the huge task of handling both the Holyrood vote and the UK government's Alternative Vote (AV) referendum.

They claim that running two polls on one day is too much to handle overnight and could lead to mistakes as returning officers would be trying to make decisions at daybreak "when they are at their most tired".

The problem has arisen because Returning Officers have been instructed to verify all ballot papers - including identifying spoiled ballots - for both the election and the referendum before proceeding to the actual count. Scottish elections are also more complicated and time-consuming than UK elections because votes for both constituency MSPs and list MSPs have to be processed.

Adding to the burden are new anti-fraud measures - introduced after the last Scottish election - which are expected to add hours onto the count process.

Scottish Labour leader Iain Gray last night described the situation as "unacceptable" and said his party would be seeking to change the law at Westminster to ensure the Scottish election count goes ahead immediately after the polling booths close on Thursday evening. "People have the right to know who has won the election as fast as possible," he said. "There must be no delay in counting the ballot papers. That is the law for general elections, and it must be the law for Scottish elections too. But under this plan, we won't know who is going to be First Minister until the weekend after polling day."

The revelations will raise further questions about the decision by UK ministers to hold the AV referendum on the same day as the Scottish, Welsh and English local elections.Peers are set to re-commence their marathon debate into the referendum - negotiated by the Liberal Democrats as part of its Westminster coalition agreement with the Conservatives - this week amid signs that they may succeed in preventing it from taking place in May.

Among those councils which have already decided not to count overnight due to the referendum is Glasgow, Scotland's largest local authority, which said last night that counting the poll and the referendum in the early hours of Friday morning would represent an "unacceptable risk".

A discussion paper circulated by the Interim Electoral Management Board for Scotland, the body that represents Returning Officers, also warns that the pressures on the system "are raising major concerns" on whether they can meet the challenge.

The paper confirms that 19 of Scotland's 32 councils have decided it is better to lock votes up on Thursday night before coming back on Friday morning. It warns: "It would see Returning Officers and their staff having to make crucial decisions … especially in the event of recounts, when they are at their most tired. With overnight counts modelled to extend from 10pm through to 7 or 8am in many cases, the ability of observers to accurately monitor processes late in the count must be called into doubt."