Police officers were spotted in the Emirates Arena during Glasgow’s General Election count this morning after concerns of electoral fraud were raised.
Election officials raised concerns over a number of ballot papers that were allegedly personated. The ballot papers in question came from the Glasgow West constituency and the Glasgow South West constituency.
Officials confirmed three ballot papers have now been extracted from the count.
READ MORE: Live coverage of the general election on polling day
The act of personating means the voter has been suspected of assuming the identity of someone else with the intent to deceive, an offence which can carry a jail sentence.
Police were spotted inspecting the ballot papers on the counting floor early on Friday morning, with pictures captured by Herald photographers showing them carrying evidence bags.
A spokesman for Glasgow City Council said: "Over the course of the day we have received four reports of potential personation at polling places.
"The police subsequently asked us to extract three ballot papers from the count and this was done when the relevant ballot boxes arrived at the count centre.”
Police Scotland has also been contacted for comment.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here