THE Scottish Greens have admitted an "error" took place during its selection process for candidates to stand in next year's Holyrood election.
The party has faced internal pressure in recent days after it published its list of Holyrood candidates on Monday.
Members raised concerns around the selection process for a number of regions, namely the North East and Glasgow lists.
The National told how some members had demanded a recount took place, with one source branding the situation a "clusterfuck".
The party's internal elections officer resigned from her position on Monday evening following the backlash, although she went on to clarify that she did "not know whether there is a problem with the results".
While the Scottish Greens initially said that they were confident in the selection results, a revised count has now taken place, and the party has confirmed that an "error" had occurred in the software which was used to conduct the voting.
The party said that the error affected the ranking of a number of candidates, but stressed that it did not impact on any of the lead candidates, who are most likely to be elected to Holyrood.
In a statement on Wednesday evening, the party said it had sourced Mi-Voice, a third-party voting platform, to host and count the ballot papers for the Holyrood selection contest.
It was first made aware of a "software error" on Tuesday morning, after previously being told by the provider that "the counting had been completed and confirmed to meet the standards requested under our internal party rules".
The statement said: "Party officials were not aware of this error at the time of previous statements, and had been reassured by the third-party provider on Monday afternoon that all counting had been completed and verified.
“Following a full revised count with oversight and verification from current party officials and those involved in previous Holyrood selections, we can confirm our full list of candidates for the Holyrood 2026 campaign.
"All of the previously announced 15 lead candidates remain duly selected and will continue to lead the party's campaign to elect a record number of MSPs."
It continued: “We would like to thank the volunteers and staff who worked to identify and resolve this situation under extreme pressure and to Mi-Voice for their cooperation in resolving the error. We understand that this has been a stressful process for candidates and members, and we thank them for their vigilance, patience and trust.
“We are looking forward to working with our strong Green candidates in this election campaign, in which we’ll present our positive vision of a better future where people and planet are put above corporate greed.”
The National understands that the party's selection board contacted the candidates who had been affected by the error by phone earlier on Wednesday.
In a message to members which was seen by The National, the party's executive co-chairs, Carolynn Scrimgeour and Zoe Clelland, apologised "for the stress that Mi-Voice's error has placed on candidates and volunteers".
They said: "In our capacity as executive co-chairs, we worked with relevant party office-bearers to ensure there was adequate oversight.
"The Selection Board reconvened this morning [Wednesday] to agree actions, including verifying the accuracy of the revised results, before informing affected candidates, distributing the results to members and issuing external communications. We felt it was essential to provide information to candidates first.
"All candidates have been notified of this situation, with affected candidates being called following this morning's Selection Board meeting."
Votes were counted using an iterative Single Transferable Vote (STV) system and was done as a bottom-up iterative process, meaning that votes are transferred to the next candidate of choice if a voter's first candidate is eliminated in a count.
Voting platform Mi-Voice said it had been contacted by the Scottish Greens just two hours after the party had published its list of candidates "seeking clarification about the production process of the results".
Mi-voice director, Simon Thomson, said the firm had initially "responded to say that the process had been undertaken according to the agreed procedure".
However, he continued: “Later on the same afternoon, following further discussions, it came to our attention that the count sheets provided for the Holyrood selection results appeared to contain anomalies.
“Following a thorough review, the anomalies were traced to a technical fault with the vote counting software provided by a trusted third-party supplier, which was used in place of the Mi-Voice counting system due to the specific STV rules required.
"The technical fault impacted the transfer of following preferences in cases where a candidate had been withdrawn from the count to create the ordered list.
"Although our internal procedures for producing and verifying results were followed, this technical problem was undetected prior to the distribution of the original lists."
Mi-Voice said it notified the party's office-bearers of the issue at around 10am on Tuesday.
Thomson continued: “The third-party software in question is a widely recognised and industry-standard vote counting tool. We have since reported the issue to the software vendor and have implemented a solution that enables accurate list production moving forward.
"Using this revised process, we have produced updated candidate lists, which have undergone additional manual validation to ensure they represent the final and accurate outcome. These corrected lists have now been shared with the Party."
Thomson went on to say that Mi-Voice acknowledged the concern the issue has raised for Green members and candidates, adding: "We understand the frustration and confusion, and we sincerely apologise for the inconvenience and concern it has caused."
He added: “To ensure this does not happen again, we are reviewing our internal quality control measures and introducing enhanced checks, particularly for scenarios involving candidate withdrawals to facilitate the production of ordered lists.
“We remain committed to transparency, responsiveness and continuous improvement.”
