Now that we are away from the hysterical, improvised reporting, I think we have a clearer picture of the problems that happened on Thursday night with the Scottish Elections.

The problems with e-counting were a minor problem. The pundits on television were really annoyed about it — but I think that was because they were unable to report a result. The bottom line is, the results are in and they are correct. We hope they are correct anyway — and there is no real suggestion that the e-counting machines were misreading votes.

All spoilt ballots were verified by a human, so any talk about recounts to take into account the spoilt ballots is nonsense. A spoilt ballot is a spoilt ballot. There’s not much else you can do about it.

There was e-counting, but there was no e-voting. Voting still took place with paper and pencil. The machines didn’t cause the spoilt ballots — they are two separate issues, despite some reports I’ve seen conflating the two issues.

Talking of conflating, it seems as though that is what caused the confusion among the electorate. Combining the two Scottish Parliament votes on the one paper was a massive mistake. Here is why.

Anybody talking about how “complicated” the Single Transferable Vote is, is a liar.

The reason was the introduction of “single transferable vote” for council elections. This high-minded proportional device was forced on Labour by the Scottish Lib-Dems as part of their price for joining the coalition government in 2003. It is designed to break Labour’s rusted-in grip on local government in the west of Scotland, and it requires the voters to mark a list of names with numbers in order of preference instead of with the old crosses. Used to voting in a hurry, scribbling an X on the way to or from work, the citizenry got muddled.

There is so much wrong with this paragraph. For a start, anyone who voted with an X on the council vote still had their vote counted as the equivalent of a 1. So it wasn’t these crosses that were the spoilt ballots.

Also, there were far fewer spoilt ballots in the council election than in the Scottish Parliament election. In fact, the Scottish Parliament ballot paper was five times more likely to have been spoilt by a voter.

Single Transferable Vote, far from being complicated, is actually — literally — as easy as 1, 2, 3. And the fact that there were relatively few spoilt ballots in the STV system proves this.

But now for the head-scratching bit. The system used for the Scottish Parliament has not changed, yet it has caused the most confusion. A popular theory gathering steam is that the layout and wording of the Scottish Parliament ballot paper was too ambiguous.

At the top it was headed, “You have two votes”. That is true, but they are two different kinds of votes — one constituency (first past the post), and one regional (d’Hondt top-up list).

The two columns were different colours — one purple, and one peach. And that sentence, “You have two votes”, had two arrows coming out of it, one pointing to each column. In addition, above each column was the instruction “Mark one box only”.

So, the instructions were all there, complete with colour coding for dummies. But still a lot of people got it wrong. I think it is fair to say that putting both votes on the one paper was a mistake. In addition to the fact that an STV election was happening at the same time, it is easy to see how some people might have become confused.

This whole mess could have been avoided with one simple measure. Put the Scottish Parliament votes on separate sheets like before. Each sheet should be headed “You have one vote on this sheet of paper”. That would probably have made the whole thing crystal clear.

This is all part of a wider issue about the voting system. The two votes were put on the same piece of paper to try and emphasise how they were inter-related.

It is often said that many voters believed that the regional vote (sometimes colloquially referred to as “the second vote”) was meant to be a second preference vote, which is not the case. To try and tackle the perception, the regional vote became “the first vote”, and took precedence on the left-hand side of the ballot paper. But this just seems to have confused voters even more.

Frankly, I find it astonishing that so many people lack basic understanding about the voting system. On the vox pops on television I’ve heard a lot of people bemoaning the lack of information about the changes made this year. But they were very well publicised.

The changes to local government have been well-known for years in advance. In fact, it was a central plank of the Lib Dems’ coalition deal with Labour four years ago. It was big news when it happened. Okay, that was four years ago. But anybody who was watching the news then will have been aware about it.

A leaflet came through my — and, I presume, everyone else’s — door explaining quite clearly how to vote. I’ve seen features about it on the internet and television. Even the political parties themselves, eager not to lose any votes on spoilt papers, were often keen to stress how the voting system worked on their leaflets. All of these were ignored by the voters who spoilt their papers.

A few weeks ago I mentioned this animation designed to explain the voting system. Ryan Morrison in the comments mentioned how patronising it is.

I’m a big fan of encouraging people to vote, it’s one of the most important things you’ll ever do and I also support the idea of lowering the voting age to 16 but surely this was aimed at seven year olds?

Even I don’t think seven year olds should have the vote!

Fair enough, most won’t have seen that website. But, apart from producing an animation aimed at people even younger than seven, I really don’t know what else the authorities were supposed to do to explain it.

For some people, you would probably have the pay the BBC somehow crowbar it into the plot of River City to get people to realise. Or get the barman at the Queen Vic to say, “Here, have you heard about this new voting system they are using this year?”

I am left to conclude that the people who didn’t understand what to do in the polling booth simply do not follow the news carefully. There is a debate at the moment as to whether or not it is fair to say that a lot of people who spoilt their ballots actually deserved to have their vote discounted.

Yes, everyone should have the vote — even the not-so-smart. And voting should not be a difficult process. But the point is, this isn’t a difficult process. It was probably more complicated than it needed to be, due to the reasons I’ve mentioned above. But the bottom line is that the instructions were reasonably clear and it wasn’t difficult.

Voting is a right. But it is also a responsibility. When you cast your vote, you are essentially imposing your decision on other people. I’m not surprised that some people are openly wondering about the ability of the electorate to make these decisions. After all, the electorate decides who is in government. I’d like to think that the people making this decision are not ignorant. Not necessarily intelligent, but at least not ignorant.

(Incidentally, proof if proof be need be that the electorate is stupid, I learned today that Labour’s regional vote actually went up in this election. What would Bentham say about that?)

Another problem which has been touched upon by a few people was the fact that names and slogans appeared on the party list. Infamously, the SNP was actually “Alex Salmond for First Minister” on the ballot paper. Solidarity was “Tommy Sheridan — Solidarity”. Other parties put slogans in their name (eg. “The Publican Party — Smoking in pubs”).

It is a tactic that can work. Like AA1 Double Glazing in the Yellow Pages, the SNP got to the top of the list by changing their name so that it began with A. It seems as though it worked, because they made massive gains in the regional vote.

Some are complaining that this caused confusion, that it brought campaigning into the polling booth where it shouldn’t be and that it has led people to believe that the regional vote is a vote for the First Minister. Maybe this should be looked at, but I don’t know how it can be stopped.

Should political parties have ‘official’ names that can only be changed, say, every ten years? A possibility, I guess. Otherwise, I don’t see how these practices can be stopped.

It will be interesting to see what the Electoral Commission’s report has to say about this whole debacle. But having thought a lot about it, I am fairly sure that keeping the two Scottish Parliament votes separate would probably have avoided it all.

And it couldn’t have been tighter. I’m still digesting this, but the only feasible coalition is SNP + Lib Dem + Green, and only by a bawhair.

Okay, here are my more in-depth thoughts. Firstly about the results themselves, then about the counting problems.

The bottom line is clearly the fact that the SNP have won the election. For the first time in fifty years, Labour are not the largest party in Scotland. In a sense, this isn’t a surprise. Even though Labour have always been electorally popular in Scotland, they have not always been in power. Now they have been for ten uninterrupted years. It was only natural that the main opposition would get in sometime, and they have.

The anti-Labour backlash wasn’t quite as large as I had hoped for, and the result really could not have been any closer. And exciting result in a way, and also quite an odd one. I think anyone expecting an independence referendum on the basis of this result had better not hold their breath.

Where I live, in Fife, Labour had a terrible night. Often they could expect to have Fife ringfenced, apart from that Lib Dem stronghold in North East Fife. But the SNP upsurge has seen a spectacular victory in Central Fife.

Meanwhile West Dunfermline has been taken by the Liberal Democrats, where they had that amazing Westminster by-election victory before. There were a lot of people who were disgruntled about the Lib Dem’s Westminster victory there, accusing them of hypocrisy over the Forth Road Bridge tolls. I think this cements once and for all how the actual voters feel about the Lib Dems in West Dunfermline.

In the other two Fife seats, Labour hang on, but with substantial swings towards the SNP. In these true monkey-in-a-red-rosette areas, hopefully the Labour candidates have been given a bit of a shock. The upshot is that out of the five Fife constituency seats, Labour now only have two of them where they would normally count on having four.

My over all impressions about the election, though, are that this was more about SNP gains than Labour losses. I’ve not studied the figures carefully, but during the night I got the impression that the Labour vote was actually holding solid — and indeed in some cases increasing — in a lot of areas.

The Lib Dems and the Conservatives were broadly unchanged in most areas. The SNP’s gains seem to mostly come from the collapse in the smaller parties. I noticed that many constituencies had only candidates from the four main parties, while last time round the SSP contested many areas. The absence of the SSP, combined with the general collapse of the left as a whole, seems to have contributed the most to the SNP’s upsurge.

What I cannot quite get my head around is the dire performance of all the minor parties. The problems with the SSP and Solidarity are understandable. They’ve spent the past year or so ripping chunks out of each other. Alister at Perspective has noted that a united left was credible, and greater than the sum of its parts. Last night was a disaster for both parties.

But what I really don’t understand is the collapse in support for small parties as a whole. It has been a distinguishing feature of the Scottish Parliament ever since the beginning — the variety of voices represented. Almost all of them have gone.

The Greens are down to just two seats, which is incredibly disappointing for them. I got the impression that they were hopeful of getting three MSPs in the Lothian region. So a massive shock for them, I think.

John Swinburne is also waving goodbye to Holyrood. I was impressed with his interview on BBC Scotland last night. He was very gracious in defeat, and he even said he thought the country was in good hands!

So, besides the Greens, there is only one person occupying the “other” box — Margo MacDonald. Socialism has been wiped out totally. No sign of any other different voices. Extraordinary.

Given all of this, I wonder if the SSP / Solidarity split has reflected badly on small parties as a whole. Perhaps the small parties have been hurt the most by this spoilt ballots problem. But over all, I’m scratching my head about that.

As I said above, I think a lot of the SNP’s upsurge is down to the poor performance of the small parties more than a collapse in Labour support. It is worth remembering that the SSP and Solidarity both support independence. It is very possible that, with a strong SNP campaign, a lot of these socialist supporters were tempted to vote SNP so that they could kick Labour out.

I think it was a good night for the Conservatives. They are down one seat overall, but they made a FPTP gain, which is good going for them. Remember, with the same constituency boundaries, the Tories were wiped out in 1997. Over the past decade, the Conservatives have been gaining FPTP seats back one-by-one.

And the Conservatives are also ahead of the Lib Dems over all. People always talk about the Conservatives being dead in Scotland. I’ve never bought that, and this result lays that myth to rest.

The Lib Dems are fourth, and it’s difficult to see much good news for them. Yes, a good result in West Dunfermline, where they were pushing hard for victory. But nothing too impressive elsewhere. And a huge swing away from Nicol Stephen in his own seat. A bit of a hairy one.

In a bit of amateur psephology on Twitter last night, I suggested that the SNP upsurge was happening across Scotland — apart from in the west. I was shocked when they didn’t win Cumbernauld and Kilsyth. It’s difficult to imagine how, with this great nationwide result for the SNP, how they lost that particular seat so spectacularly.

But then Nicola Sturgeon won Govan — at last. And then, as the list results came in, they won an astonishing four seats. The SNP performed quite well on the list in most regions. So it was a double-whammy, with the SNP doing well in both votes.

The exceptional region was, I think, Mid-Scotland and Fife, where Labour got three top-up seats. That is partly a reflection of the losses they made in Fife. In essence, the three constituency seats they lost were gained back in the top-up by default. Disappointments here for the Greens and the Lib Dems.

And the final over all result? Astonishingly close! And so close that it looks difficult for anyone to form a coalition. The only real feasible solution is SNP–Lib Dem–Green, but even that would have a majority of just one, which is not enough. Maybe Margo MacDonald could be brought on board, but it is still hairy. It could hinge partly on who becomes Presiding Officer.

Otherwise, Alex Salmond for First Minister? Almost certainly, as his party has the most seats. But it could effectively be a minority administration. Who knows, we might even have another election on our hands. What a thought!

Given all of the problems there were last night, there is probably not much appetite for another election. But a re-run would probably work okay. It wouldn’t be running at the same time as the local elections, and presumably (hopefully!) people are a bit more well-educated about how the voting system works.

The problems are causing a stink. I sympathise a bit with the idea that if you are too stupid to vote properly — and it’s not that complicated a system — then what right have you got to decide who runs the country?

On the other hand, there were a lot of things that could have been done to limit this. Most importantly, holding the local elections at the same time has undoubtedly been a huge mistake.

And just as bad a mistake was the decision to count those local election votes overnight. That could well have been what threw the e-counting systems into problems. If they had just conentrated on the Scottish Parliament overnight, it could have been okay.

There is no harm in waiting until the afternoon to start counting the local election results. Indeed, the way things turned out, that might have been quicker!

As for the e-counting systems, there were some rumblings about them in the run-up to the election, particularly from Fitaloon at MicroShaft. It looks a bit prescient now, but when I wrote the Scottish Roundup before polling ended, I wrote about it saying, “It would be a travesty if democracy failed this evening.” It did. So in that sense, these issues were entirely predictable, and predicted.

The e-counting systems were deemed necessary for the single transferable vote system and I can see why. As such, I don’t have a problem with the e-counting systems themselves. But what would have been the harm in just counting the Scottish Parliament votes by hand? That would have avoided this whole mess.

Electoral reform doom-mongers should be made aware that there is not a great deal to suggest that STV per se has caused the problems with spoilt papers. The number of spoilt papers in the local council elections has been much smaller than in the Scottish Parliament election.

That suggests that people understand STV well. But for whatever reason, they were thrown by the Scottish Parliament ballot paper. I admit to finding the huge list of parties rather overwhelming, though that should hardly lead to people filling in the form incorrectly.

One theory is that the ambiguous wording of the ballot paper, “You have TWO votes”, confused some people. Instead of putting one vote in each column, seemingly people have been putting two votes in one column. You still have to be thick as mince to manage to do that though. There are arrows pointing to each column, and it clearly says “mark ONE box only” above each column.

The biggest problem for me is that in Scotland we now have four different electoral systems for four different types of election:

• First Past the Post for Westminster
• Additional Member System (FPTP + D’Hondt-style top-up party lists) for Holyrood
• D’Hondt-style party list for European Parliament
• Single Transferable Vote for local councils

With so many different systems, it is no wonder some voters are getting confused, especially when two of them are being used on the same day. There are two answers — one radical, one not so radical.

The not so radical one is to simply hold local elections on a separate day. Tommy Sheridan made a number of good points talking on the television last night about it. There was undoubtedly some confusion, and the local elections were overshadowed and absorbed by the big national debate.

It would be sensible to simply hold different elections on different days. It might decrease turnout, but on the other hand if it means fewer spoilt ballots then more valid votes might be counted!

The more radical solution would be to stick to one voting system, namely single transferable vote. This is, on balance, the best system. The fact that there were actually relatively few spoilt ballots means that people have no bother understanding how to vote in an STV system.

The other systems are unfair for a variety of other reasons, but this post is long enough so I won’t go into them just now. No doubt long-time readers of this blog will be aware of what I think.

It would be a struggle to get all of the elections onto an STV system, particularly Westminster. But it would be nice, wouldn’t it?

As for who is to blame, obviously it is the Scotland Office because they are the ones who decided that the two elections should be held on the same day, and they are the ones who decided that the e-counting machines should be used. They have responsibility for the operation for the Scottish Parliament elections.

It is not a devolved matter, as the cowardly No. 10 statement claimed. Westminster has tried to pass the buck, but it is a Westminster department — Douglas Alexander’s Scotland Office — that is ultimately responsible.

Some people wonder what the Scotland Office is for these days. Obviously they are looking for stuff to do, so have been busybodying with this e-counting stuff. The e-counting systems might have been desirable for the local councils, but they did not need to be used for the Scottish Parliament elections.