Calls for return of election cash

Mr Brown said the electronic counting system failed

Taxpayers should be entitled to money back after last year's Scottish elections, a Nationalist MSP has said.

Keith Brown said the money should be returned after figures revealed the cost of the Holyrood elections would be more than £25m - up £9m from 2003.

Mr Brown said the company involved in the electronic counting method, DRS, should refund some cash.

Scotland Office minister David Cairns said the high costs were because two elections were held on the same day.

Separate elections

He said electronic counting was only introduced to cope with the single transferable vote system being used for the local government elections.

"This is something Keith Brown, as a former deputy returning officer and member of the Association of Electoral Administrators, should know all too well," he said.

"The Scottish Parliament voted for STV and it is frankly a nonsense for him not to realise that carrying out two separate elections using two different systems for the first time and on the same day would naturally cost more than in previous years", he added.

There were 146,099 parliamentary ballot papers rejected in last May's Holyrood vote.

A report into the fiasco later found that voters were treated as an "afterthought".

The huge costs of the Scotland Office are a disgrace in light of the botched job they made of actually running the elections Keith Brown MSP

Mr Brown said: "When we saw counts being abandoned and having to be re-run and delayed then I think the public's got the right to ask for some money back for a very poor service".

The MSP for Ochil obtained answers to parliamentary questions at both Holyrood and Westminster on the cost of the ballot.

The MSP said these showed election costs to the Scottish Government were £4,8m - including £3.56m to support the introduction of electronic counting and £1.26m to Data Research Services (DRS), which implemented the automated counting system.

Mr Brown said the Scotland Office had estimated their costs to be £19m and added that local authorities spent £1.9m.

'Botched job'

He said: "The rising costs of elections, no doubt due largely to the introduction of electronic counting and the involvement of DRS is a cause for concern."

He also hit out at the Scotland Office, saying its election costs had increased from £12m in 2003 to an estimated £19m four years later.

The SNP MSP said: "The huge costs of the Scotland Office are a disgrace in light of the botched job they made of actually running the elections.

"The rising cost is another symptom of this badly managed election. The result was right but the process was clearly wrong."

DRS said it had "contributed fully" to the independent review held by the Electoral Commission.

A statement said: "DRS is dedicated to the delivery of secure, robust technologies for the counting of complex elections, and its e-counting technology delivered results for 32 secure counts across Scotland - producing results for just under 500 individual contests in under 24 hours, as opposed to the several days estimated to count the same elections manually."