Western Isles election count delayed 25/5/14
Delays in counting Euro votes in the Western Isles means the official results of the Scottish outcome of the European election has been held back.
Provisional indications to elect six MEPs to the European Parliament will be known on Sunday night but the final announcement cannot be made until the islands ballot papers are dealt with.
All 32 local authority district totals have to be added together to calculate the share to the vote before officially allocating the six seats.
The ballot was held on Thursday but the Western Isles is the last constituency in Scotland to open up the ballot boxes.
All other areas are tallying up their votes and will declare their results on Sunday.
But the count for the Western Isles has been postponed by three days for unexplained reasons.
It was initially set to be the first in Scotland with the tally arranged for Friday afternoon in Stornoway Sports Centre.
Religious observance ruled out holding the count on the Sabbath as in other parts of Scotland, and it risked accusations of council hypocrisy and sparking demands to regularly open the sports centre on Sundays.
A council spokesman didn’t believe the delay would cause much disruption as the official allocation of seats was not scheduled to be undertaken until Monday.
The Western Isles would be the very last in the UK to hold a count if it wasn’t that Northern Ireland opted to focus on local council election results first.