100,000 Scottish Votes May 3 2007-May 4 2007

100,000 Scottish Votes have been cast into the Great Polling Station in the Sky after massed ranks of Scottish ballot papers were spoiled in a debacle on a scale rivalled only by Jeb Bush’s “Hanging Chads 2000” Tour of Florida.

Scottish Votes were born amidst a fanfare of nationalist triumphalism from SNP leader Alex Salmond who predicted a bold new future for Scottish votes, a future in which Scots would determine their own political future and no longer migrate to Westminster to bugger things up for the English (a phenomenon believed to be the Scots' revenge for the decades when English votes buggered things up for Scotland with things like the Poll Tax, not to mention all those jokes about deep-fried Mars Bars).

Within minutes of the polling stations being opened, however, Scottish voters were thrown into confusion by multiple ballot papers whose complexity was on a par with the Schleswig-Holstein question and whose incomprehensibility was on a par with the popularity of Noel Edmonds. Matters were made yet worse for the Scottish Votes when they found themselves faced by a new method of electronic counting. The new counting machines were to prove disastrous – particularly in the Highlands and Islands where electricity only reaches the communities sporadically, chiefly during lightning strikes.

Meanwhile in the Western Isles the count was delayed by fog, which grounded the helicopter carrying the ballot boxes to Stornoway. Ballots will now have to be transported in the traditional manner, each vote placed in a bottle and thrown in to the sea. All islanders are being urged to empty suitable bottles as quickly as possible and cast their votes into one of the two wobbly Atlantic Oceans in front of them.

With initial returns suggesting Boris McYeltsin's election as the Scottish Socialist MSP for the constituency of Tommy Sheridan (South) and Nessie being returned as First Minister for Bournemouth, it quickly became apparent that the new system made the calculation of how many votes had been cast and for whom - hitherto understood to be the purpose of elections - even more difficult to add up than the cost of the Scottish Parliament Building.

Less than 24 hours after their birth, 100,000 Scottish Votes were found dead, bludgeoned by electoral incompetence. Following a lengthy court process they will be folded (incorrectly) and marked “spoiled” before being buried at a place of worship and in a service which has not yet been determined, thanks to a funeral ballot form modelled on a national lottery scratchcard.

100,000 Scottish Votes are survived by a Labour victory in the Scottish Parliament, an SNP victory, an SNP led-coalition, a Labour-led coalition and none of the above... all at the same time.