Premium
The Scottish spoiled ballot: where was statistics?
Author(s) -
Bird Sheila
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
significance
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.123
H-Index - 21
eISSN - 1740-9713
pISSN - 1740-9705
DOI - 10.1111/j.1740-9713.2008.00275.x
Subject(s) - ballot , parliament , george (robot) , political science , presidential system , presidential election , spoilt vote , voting , law , public administration , group voting ticket , history , politics , art history
In May 2007, Scotland went to the polls to elect both local constituency and regional members to the Scottish Parliament. Astonishingly, 1 votes were rejected as “spoiled”. Voters had misunderstood the new form of ballot paper—3% had marked a single cross despite having two votes. Parties contesting the election described it as “a debacle”, “a shambles”, “totally unsatisfactory”. One American called it more flawed than Florida's notorious “hanging chad” ballot that gave the 2000 Presidential election to George Bush. What went wrong? Sheila Bird looks into the Scottish ballot paper.