I think that Douglas Alexander has some explaining to do this morning. As Scottish Secretary he is the head of the Scotland Office, the small Whitehall department which was absolutely in charge of this election.

Most people would agree that voters in Scotland were yesterday faced with confusion heaped upon confusion.

First, the ballot papers for the parliamentary elections had been changed. In previous elections, the list of candidates for constituency MSP had been printed on the left hand side, the side you would normally go to first, while the regional list - the proportional representation part - was printed on the right.

This time, for the first time, that order was reversed. Apparently the powers that be felt that having the regional list on the right somehow suggested it was a second vote, rather than both votes being of equal importance.

Second, the Scotland Office took the decision that the Scottish council elections would be held on the same day as the parliamentary elections. This added to the confusion because for the first time, the council elections were using a form of proportional representation known as the single transferable vote, which required the voter to put not an 'X' in the box, but a number to show their order of preference - 1, 2, 3 and so on.

In other words, when the voters went into the polling station yesterday they had to work out that they needed to put an 'X' in the box for a normal, first-past-the-post vote for their constituency MSP; an 'X' in the box for on the regional list; and then vote for their councillor, marking 1,2 and 3 for their first, second and third preferences.

Faced with that in the polling booth, I think a lot of people frankly panicked.

There had been a big education campaign in the media, telling people how to use their various votes, but it seems to have gone in one ear and out the other.

The decision that really shocked everyone was insisting on pressing ahead with the count for both sets of elections on the night. Once the parliamentary elections had been counted, the Scotland Office decided, the council election count would start.

New electronic counting machines were being used in Scotland for the first time. They had been trialled in London and Northern Ireland, but never used for such a comparatively large and complicated election.

As the night wore on, it became clear that the counting machines provided by DRS data services were not working as smoothly as we were promised. I understand that the scanners, which read the various ballot papers, had not been recognising the data on the voting slips.

This electronic counting caused delays in declaring results in several regions of Scotland, including Lothians, where the Edinburgh count is bogged down in problems, and the West of Scotland region, as the Strathkelvin and Bearsden count has been postponed until later this morning. In addition, the Highlands regional count has been held up because fog prevented a helicopter taking off to bring ballot boxes from the Western Isles over to the main count.

You have to remember that if a constituency vote has not been counted properly, and if the count is therefore held over, that impacts on the regional list. Both the constituency vote and the regional vote are counted together to come up with the overall share of the regional vote, determining the regional list MSPs.

The Electoral Commission for Scotland pleaded with Mr Alexander to hold over the count until Friday. They said that there was so much complication in the voting system that everyone would have to be fresh, and have time to make sure that everything was working properly, rather than plunge into the unknown at 1am on a Friday morning. But he appears to have taken the attitude: "We know best."

People up here are just baffled. They want it to be over and to know who runs Scotland. At the moment they haven't a clue.

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