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Page last updated at 23:13 GMT, Wednesday, 8 October 2008 00:13 UK
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SNP renews election ballot call

Ballot papers
The committee said ballot papers needed to be redesigned

The SNP has renewed its appeal to the Westminster government to give the Scottish Parliament full responsibility for elections in Scotland.

MSPs are due to debate a committee report into how the chaos of the 2007 elections can be avoided.

The local government committee at Holyrood has been inquiring into what went wrong on election day that year.

A total of 184,000 parliamentary and council ballot papers were rejected because they were wrongly filled in.

The committee said ballot papers needed to be redesigned, there needed to be a chief returning officer and parliamentary election should be decoupled from local elections.

All of these recommendations have been agreed across the parties.

But the SNP's Bob Doris has written to the new Scottish Secretary Jim Murphy asking him to go further and reverse the usual Westminster line that the law on elections should be decided by the UK Parliament.

He said it was a prime opportunity for him to demonstrate his new approach of working with the Scottish Parliament.



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SEE ALSO
Westminster rejects election move
24 Jun 08 |  Scotland
Holyrood 'should not run ballots'
18 May 08 |  Scotland
Bid to separate future elections
16 Mar 08 |  Scotland
MSPs agree election control move
10 Jan 08 |  Scotland

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