It is risky to predict the outcome of an election. Forecasting accurately the result of Thursday's Scottish Parliamentary poll is no less fraught with difficulty, in large part because of the large number of undecided voters. Uncertainty is not good for the prophesier. What can be said with some certainty about the forthcoming election is that every vote is likely to count, given that Labour and the SNP, the main parties, are running each other close in the opinion polls.

It is all the more disturbing, in the circumstances, to learn that a significant number of voters has been effectively disenfranchised because of problems with sending out their postal ballot papers. As The Herald reports today, delays in distributing papers to local authorities have resulted in voters going on holiday or being out of the country for other reasons without having been given the opportunity they requested to have their say before leaving. This has, understandably, angered members of the public who applied for a postal ballot that did not arrive in time.

Postal voting has become increasingly popular since being made available on demand by the Westminster government in 2000, up to six days before an election date. As of yesterday, readers were still contacting this newspaper to complain about their postal vote not having arrived. Is it possible that the level of demand for postal voting ahead of Thursday's poll had not been anticipated? No-one should have been caught napping, given the growing popularity of a voting option that has been shown to boost turnout. The focus should have been resolutely on ensuring there were no glitches.

Postal voting has had its difficulties in the past (the ballot fraud of 2004 in Birmingham) but appeared to have overcome these. Imagine the furore now, however, if it emerges that a small number of voters had been disenfranchised, through no fault of their own, in a constituency where the margin of victory was in single or low double-digit numbers. Could the election be tainted by recourse to the sort of court action that so damaged the American presidential elections in 2000? We need to know why there was this delay and who was responsible. Also, we need reassurance that this will not occur again. It would be corrosive to the democratic process if adverse publicity about this episode damaged the credibility of postal voting. Given levels of voter apathy, robust and viable alternatives to the traditional way of voting, rooted in the nineteenth century, should be developed, not undermined.