Future Scottish elections should not be run by the Scottish Government, a committee of MPs has said.
Future Scottish elections should not be run by the Scottish Government, a committee of MPs has said.
The Commons Scottish affairs committee said transferring responsibility for the ballots was not necessary.
The Commons Scottish affairs committee said transferring responsibility for the ballots was not necessary.
However, it criticised the role of the Scotland Office in last year's local and Holyrood elections, when more than 140,000 ballots were spoiled.
But it also hit out at the role of the Scotland Office in last year's local and Holyrood elections, when more than 140,000 ballots were spoiled.
An expert had told the committee he was not comfortable that everyone who was elected to Holyrood deserved to be.
The Scottish Government said Westminster had yet to take any responsibility for the fiasco.
The committee also said there had been a loss of confidence in electronic counting.
But committee convener, Labour MP Mohammed Sarwar, told BBC Scotland's Politics Show the main problem stemmed from the combined first-past-the-post and list ballot paper.
The Scottish Parliament agreed in January that Holyrood should be given more say over how Scottish elections are conducted.
The Holyrood administration has demanded control over Scottish elections be devolved to Holyrood - but Mr Sarwar said it was more important to learn lessons from the election night debacle, rather than debate who controlled them.
First Minister Alex Salmond has led calls for responsibility for the ballots to be passed from the Scotland Office to Holyrood.
We've taken responsibility. Unfortunately at Westminster, the ministers responsible for this haven't taken responsibility Bruce CrawfordMinister for the Scottish parliament
There may be a case for organisational changes on the ground in Scotland, including reformed structures of accountability Scottish Affairs Committee report
The Scottish affairs committee, which also said there had been a loss of confidence in electronic voting, found devolving the running of elections was not "necessary in order for elections to proceed smoothly in future".
But the committee's report stated: "This is not necessary in order for elections to proceed smoothly in future.
But MPs said there may be a case for organisational changes on the ground in Scotland and found the Electoral Commission's VoteScotland information unsatisfactory, as well as its failure to flag up "warning signs" about the impending ballot paper changes.
"However, there may be a case for organisational changes on the ground in Scotland, including reformed structures of accountability."
Mr Sarwar said the Scotland Office had to take its share of the blame because of decision-making delays, but he added: "The main cause for the problem was the combined ballot for the constituency members of the Scottish Parliament and list members.
The hard-hitting analysis of what went wrong last May also called for a review of the Electoral Commission's status.
"This was something which was endorsed by all the political parties in Scotland."
"It is difficult to see the Electoral Commission as having added any value to this entire process," the report concluded.
The Scottish Government's minister for parliament, Bruce Crawford, said the Westminster committee had dealt with the symptoms of the problem and not the cause, and branded the system a "fragmented mess".
The committee of MPs took evidence from Canadian elections expert Ron Gould, who was appointed to draw up an independent review of the voting confusion.
He told the Politics Show: "We've taken responsibility. Unfortunately at Westminster, the ministers responsible for this haven't taken responsibility and the parliament in Scotland believes that the powers should be transferred."
Mr Gould told the committee he was "not comfortable" that every MSP at Holyrood had been rightly elected, because of the number of rejected ballots.
The Scotland Office will shortly make its full response to the Gould investigation into what went wrong at last May's Scottish polls, but pointed out that the UK Government had already accepted several of the probe's main recommendations.
He also said Holyrood and council elections should be "decoupled" and held on separate days. The Scottish Government is already consulting on this.
BBC Scotland political editor Brian Taylor said several candidates at the Holyrood vote were elected with a majority less than the number of spoiled ballot papers.
He added: "By definition one could not be comfortable with that, but there is no point in the report where they say this individual was wrongly elected or that declaration was wrongly made.
"No-one is saying, for example, that all of the rejected ballot papers in one constituency would have gone to another candidate so the vote was wrong. It is an intriguing remark but I don't think it gets to the root of the problem."
'Lasting changes'
The committee report found that the VoteScotland information campaign run by the Electoral Commission was not satisfactory, as was the commission's failure to flag up "warning signs" about the impending confusion among voters over changes to ballot papers.
"There is little value in establishing an independent Electoral Commission if it fails to act robustly to warn government of potential problems with the electoral system," it said.
The role of electronic counting also came under fire, with the MPs finding: "The experience of its use in the Scottish Parliament and local government elections revealed a fundamental lack of transparency."
Until the problems are resolved, the report said it did not back the use of e-counting in future elections.
Committee chairman Mohammad Sarwar said: "This is an opportunity for the Scotland Office to make lasting changes to restore confidence in the voting process and we would like to see them co-ordinating their actions with other government departments, as the 3 May problems are unlikely to be unique to Scotland."
The Scotland Office is to publish its formal response to the Gould report, and the consultation exercise on improving the elections to the Scottish Parliament, before the summer recess.
A spokesman said: "When the Gould report was initially published, we immediately accepted five core recommendations which will have a positive effect on the experience of voters in elections."
