Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

My noble friend makes a good point because the chance of a reduced turnout is even further increased by that. Moreover, if we have to have this sort of electoral system and way of voting, maybe there is a case for switching the polling day from a Thursday to a Sunday because at least that would give people the whole day to cast their vote, whereas those who are at work on a Thursday have to do it after they get home. I turn to the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Phillips. He is quite right to say that there should be somebody to do this. But whoever is in charge of the election, what he will have to decide—certainly in Scotland—is the order for counting the different sets of votes. I assume that the same people will count both the referendum and the Scottish parliamentary votes. There is already criticism in Scotland that, because the referendum for AV is being held on the same day, the announcement of the results of the Scottish parliamentary election may be put off for several days because they will want to announce both results at the same time. Whoever is in charge of the election will have to make the decision about what to count first. The various ballot papers will have to be sorted out, as my noble friend said, or will it be decided that the Scottish parliamentary election votes will be counted and those results announced first?