LESSONS learned in Bolton from last year's all-postal local election have resulted in fewer spoiled ballot papers this time around.

Last year, nearly 10,000 votes were wasted because ballot papers were incorrectly completed.

But yesterday, election officials, who still have to total up the number of spoiled papers sent in, estimate they are about half the number of last year.

"They are significantly down on last year," said returning officer Bernard Knight.

The achievement was put down to making the ballot papers easier for people to understand and reassuring voters that the way they vote cannot be identified.

Council chiefs believe that last year many people deliberately sent back their ballot forms unsigned because they believed signing would compromise its secrecy.

But this made them invalid. The issue this year was voters having to get their ballot papers witnessed independently.

Last week, the council said it had received 1,000 papers which had to be returned to voters because they were not correctly filled in.

The figures for how many of those were not sent back to the council in time have not yet been released.