This seems to be a recurring problem:
1. Hold national election in democratic, devloped-world country.
2. Watch how an unusually large number of ballot papers are 'spoiled'.
And it's not an angry minority trying to make a political point. It's a considerable number of (slightly confused) voters trying to make sense of ballot papers that, to be honest could be a lot clearer and user-friendly.
There are not just improvements that could be made in the voting system (there were two different processes in use here, for simultaneous elections in Scotland).
I would suggest that easy, certainly cost-effective improvements could have been made if a graphc designer had been employed in the design process.
Even in this illustration from the UK Guardian, the newspaper's designer has demonstrated one such improvement - by including superimposed photos of hands making the correct pencil marks, we're seeing a demostration of correct usage. An example like this would have gone a long way to preventing the problems where ins somne constituencies, the number of spoiled papers was greater than the number of returned votes separating the winner from 2nd place.
Let's remember the importance of voting, the seriousnes of the situation, the excitement - even stress of the voter.
Let's make it easier and employ a designer next time.
