THE public will be able to give their views on postal voting as part of an investigation which will look into why thousands of ballot papers went missing in Bolton.

The Electoral Commission will be contacting community groups and holding a random telephone survey to discover the true extent of the problems in the borough.

A full evaluation of the postal vote in all local authority areas will be published before Monday, September 13.

It comes after four emergency polling booths were set up in Rumworth, Hulton and Westhoughton because thousands of ballot papers went missing.

Almost 3,400 of the 83,615 votes returned were declared spoiled because they had not been filled in correctly.

Just over 3,000 of these were ruled void because voters had not signed their declaration forms or had them properly witnessed, missing out the witness's name, address and signature on the forms.

Other papers were declared void where a voter had put a cross next to the names of too many candidates or parties, or had not left an obvious mark at all.

A few people returned their forms daubed with obscene messages.

Around 42 per cent of votes were returned, matching last year's ballot by post, and bettering the 32 per cent turnout of 2002 when polling stations were in use.

Bolton's returning officer Bernard Knight, the Criminal Prosecution Service and the police will also be interviewed as part of the comprehensive review of the system.

Postal voting was piloted in the North-west, North-east, the East Midlands, and Yorkshire and the Humber.

A spokesman for the Electoral Commission said: "We will be using a number of different of different methods to discover how successful the postal pilots have been."