The electoral council has appealed to the incoming government to commission a new, smaller ballot paper that can be read with a digital scanner.

The watchdog said the Parliamentary elections in March showed up the limitations of the current system, with candidates for 28 parties spread out across a folded sheet of paper the size of a tablecloth.

At some polling stations the voting papers were wedged into ballot boxes because they were overfull, even though this is against electoral law.

The decision to count votes by hand because of fears that electronic counting could be intercepted also made the process long, difficult and prone to mistakes, the electoral council added.

It said the government should work on develop a better automatic counting system using scanners to make the process faster and more reliable.