Confusion over ballot papers predicted nine months ago

DOUGLAS Alexander, the Scottish Secretary, was warned months before the Holyrood election debacle that the design of the voting papers he chose to use was likely to confuse people and cause them to spoil their ballots.

Independent field tests found that using separate ballot papers for the list and constituency votes was "clearer" and easier for electors to understand than the combined paper Mr Alexander chose for last week's poll.

A report detailing the potential for confusion was compiled last August and passed to the Scotland Office. In November, the minister pressed on with the single-paper plan, supported by the other major political parties.

More than 100,000 votes were disqualified last week, many of them because people wrongly marked two crosses in a single column.

The Scotland Office research found that using separate ballot papers for the constituency and regional list votes was "less likely" to lead electors into making that mistake.

The disclosure is likely to put pressure on the Scottish Secretary over the electoral fiasco. Mr Alexander, a close ally of Gordon Brown, the Chancellor, is expected to face questions in the Commons today about the report and why, despite its findings, he chose to scrap the system of separate ballot papers used in 1999 and 2003.

The warning about voter confusion is contained in a report last summer prepared for the Electoral Commission, the government's election watchdog, at the request of the Scotland Office.

When Mr Alexander decided to go ahead with the plan for a combined ballot paper, he carried out a public consultation exercise, and his decision was supported by every major political party and many returning officers around Scotland.

The Electoral Commission hired Cragg Ross Dawson, a London-based market research company, to field test a range of draft ballot papers on Scottish voters.

Over ten days last July, the firm interviewed 100 people at random in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dundee and Inverness. They were asked to vote using five different sets of papers: four combined papers, and the original separate papers used in 1999 and 2003.

The research showed that the most popular paper design was the combined paper used last week. That layout was not approved by a majority of the sample group - a total of 46 of the 100 people chose it as the best option - but it was significantly more popular than any of the others.

The Electoral Commission revealed that finding in a press release it issued last August. But it did not disclose that the researchers also found the single-paper option was more likely to lead to errors that would invalidate a ballot.

"Four voters put one cross on the paper; three put two crosses in the same column," the researchers reported. "This sort of mistake suggested a lack of understanding of the election format (ie, that there were two separate votes)."

Crucially, they went on: "The separate papers were less likely to give rise to these types of mistakes; because they were on separate sheets, it was clearer to voters that each column required a cross."

In extracts of interviews with the anonymous participants, the report shows that some of them told the researchers they found separate papers less confusing than a combined ballot.

"For clarity, it's probably easier, because of the fact that if you have two bits of paper, and you know you have to vote on both, it would...reduce mistakes I would have thought," a male respondent in Edinburgh said.

"You wouldn't get confused at all with two bits of paper," a woman in Inverness said.

The Cragg Ross Dawson report was completed in early August 2006 and handed to the Electoral Commission. Last night, the commission said a copy had been passed on to Mr Alexander's office.

Despite the report's conclusion that separate ballots were less likely to lead to voter error, the commission publicly endorsed a combined paper as "the sort of ballot paper that people would find easiest to use".

Referring to the Cragg Ross Dawson report on 10 August last year, Andy O'Neill, head of the Electoral Commission in Scotland, said: "Our research has shown that a single ballot paper for Scottish parliamentary elections is the preferred choice with the voters that we interviewed."

Many of the 100,000 or so spoiled ballots last week were rejected because voters had put two crosses in a single column, instead of one in each column.

But official election returns also suggest more than 25,000 people may also have accidentally used only one of their two votes on Thursday, as the Cragg Ross Dawson team found.

The disclosures are likely to raise fresh questions about the suitability of the Electoral Commission to investigate last week's debacle.

Alex Salmond, the SNP leader, has demanded a full judicial inquiry into the decisions leading up to the election, arguing that the commission cannot be impartial because it was involved in the ballot-paper decision. Mr Alexander has rejected the SNP call, and insists the commission is the right body to investigate.

Lord Steel, the former presiding officer of the Scottish Parliament, yesterday added to the pressure on the commission.

"The Electoral Commission is carrying out its own review, but I think there needs to be a wider one than that because some of the things that happened were outwith the remit of the commission itself," he said, adding that he wanted to see "a wide-ranging practical inquiry - not a public inquiry, but a really good investigation into all the factors that led to the shambles of the count".

The Scotland Office last night declined to discuss the Cragg Ross Dawson report, saying that ministers were waiting for the Electoral Commission's report on last week's election before commenting.

A spokesman for the Electoral Commission in Scotland said: "The independent research was commissioned by Electoral Commission at the request of the Scotland Office. The conclusions of research were passed to the Scotland Office along with the report in order to allow them to make a decision."

THE QUESTIONS ALEXANDER MUST ANSWER TODAY

1. Is it true, as the Electoral Commission states on its website, that the "mock votes" report was carried out "at the request of the Scotland Office"?

2. The Electoral Commission says a copy of the report was passed to your office. Is that true?

3. Did you or anyone in your office read the complete report before November 2006?

4. Given its own role in making the decision to adopt a combined ballot paper, how can the Electoral Commission be expected to carry out a full and impartial inquiry into the spoiled papers fiasco?