Election voting chaos to be probed

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The move was announced by the Scotland Office which said "serious technical failures" had delayed the announcement of results in several areas.

More than 100,000 votes across the country may have to be discounted because they were classed as spoiled ballots.

"In the first instance, these failures must be investigated by DRS (the company behind the vote-counting technology) and relevant returning offices against the timing targets set in the supply contract," said a Scotland Office spokesman.

He added: "We share the public's concern about the high number of rejected ballot papers."

The independent Electoral Commission will carry out a statutory review into the election.

And the Scotland Office spokesman said: "It is important that they look as a matter of urgency into delays in postal ballots, the high number of spoiled ballot papers, and the performance of the electronic counting machines."

Scottish Secretary Douglas Alexander has established from the Electoral Commission's Scottish commissioner, Sir Neil McIntosh, that the review will cover the "key areas of concern", said the spokesman.

In Glasgow Shettleston alone there were 2,035 spoiled ballots and most constituencies saw at least 1,000 papers rejected.

Problems with the new electronic counting system, being used for the first time in Scotland, also meant several counts were suspended until much later in the day. In Edinburgh, two seats, Central and Pentlands, were counted before the process was suspended, and the city's remaining four parliamentary seats will be counted later.