I was working on the elections. We were asked to avoid wearing any badges or items of clothing which might imply support for one political party in preference to another. Since the kilt is often worn at pro-independence rallies I considered it best to wear trousers for a change and wore my grey business suit which hasn't had an airing for some time. Voters were very confused by the new voting systems, including provision for electronic counting and the introduction of an entirely new method of electing local councillors on the same day. The Scottish Parliament voting paper required a cross against the preferred individual constituency MSP in one column and a cross against the preferred party in the adjacent party list MSP column. The Local Government election paper issued along with it required multiple choices of candidates for several seats, listed in numerical order of preference. Most of the votes of course I didn't see going in as they were required to be put into the ballot boxes face down, but around twenty voters showed me their completed voting papers and asked if they had filled them in correctly and most of those had put an invalid vote on one or other of the papers and I entered their papers as spoilt and issued fresh voting papers to them. One of the party agents took exception to a voter showing me their vote and asking for my advice but I explained to him that the rules allowed this so long as I did not in any way influence the voter's choices of candidates. The legislation allowed that where a one was put in place of a cross on the parliamentary paper this would be acceptable so long as there were no other markings and conversely a single cross on a local government paper would be accepted as a one. The problem is that many people seem to have put 1, 2, 3 etc. on the parliamentary papers as well as the council papers while others put multiple crosses instead of numbers on their council voting papers. There were further problems with the flimsy plastic used for the new ballot boxes and with the electronic scanning machines failing to function properly.