Voting may be spread over several days to avoid repeat of May fiasco

ELECTIONS in Scotland might be held over several days under a plan being considered by the Electoral Commission, it emerged last night.

It is looking at ways to put the voter at the centre of the electoral process and one option under investigation is to allow voting before the traditional, single polling day.

Canada and Sweden have adopted advance voting and Ron Gould, a specialist brought in to investigate the ballot fiasco at this year's Scottish election, has recommended that similar schemes be looked at for Scotland.

In its official response to Mr Gould's report, the Electoral Commission said the idea should be put out to consultation. A spokesman said there was no fixed system of advanced voting, but it might mean opening polling stations throughout the campaign, so people could vote at any time after ballot papers had been printed.

Another option might be to allow people to vote at the office of the returning officer - possibly for a week or a few days before the election - but various scenarios will be examined.

Mr Gould recommended advance voting because, he said, it would reduce the pressure on postal votes and might help to increase voter turnout.

The advance voting consultation was one of a number of measures announced by the Electoral Commission yesterday as the first steps in implementing the Gould report.

Mr Gould was brought in to analyse the way the May election was run after more than 140,000 ballot papers were either spoiled or left blank in the biggest electoral debacle in Scottish political history.

Mr Gould criticised politicians for putting their own interests first and for ignoring the needs of the voter. He was particularly harsh in criticising the decision, taken by Douglas Alexander, the Scottish Secretary at the time, to put ballot forms for the Scottish Parliament and council elections on the same paper.

Sir Neil McIntosh, an electoral commissioner, said the commission was pleased to endorse Mr Gould's recommendations.

If the commission's views are taken on - which is likely - this will mean:

• parliamentary and local government elections will not take place on the same day;

• the streamlining and consolidation of all electoral legislation to make it clearer and simpler;

• regional and constituency ballot forms for Scottish Parliament elections will be produced on separate papers.

The commission will also produce new guidelines on ballot paper design and on the way parties can be described.

This was in response to the SNP describing itself as "Alex Salmond for First Minister" on ballot papers, putting the party at the top of every paper, as candidates were listed in alphabetical order.

The commission is also looking into a chief returning officer for Scotland, another of Mr Gould's recommendations.

Sir Neil said: "We will be bringing together all those involved in elections to consider ways that we can improve electoral administration."

• IN THE Scottish Parliament elections in May, about 85,000 constituency votes in the Holyrood election were registered as "spoiled" and were therefore not counted.

A further 60,000 regional votes were treated the same way.

This total of 145,000 of incorrectly filled-in papers was by far the biggest proportion of spoiled ballot papers recorded in Scotland.

Spoiled ballot papers represented about 3.5 per cent of the votes cast - that compares with 2 per cent of papers spoiled in the controversial US presidential election in 2000.

Ron Gould, a Canadian elections expert, was brought in by the Electoral Commission to investigate what went wrong. Mr Gould published his report last month.

The two primary areas of focus were: the dual ballot paper for the Holyrood election, with both the regional and the constituency forms on the same sheet, and the decision to hold the Holyrood and council elections on the same day.

Mr Gould made a series of recommendations to avoid similar problems in future, including the decoupling of Holyrood and council elections and an end to overnight counts.