The Green Party yesterday demanded to see spoiled ballot papers across Scotland after their tally of MSPs was cut from seven to two.

Patrick Harvie managed to retain his seat in Glasgow and Robin Harper, the co-leader of the party, hung on to his seat on the Lothians list, but the Greens had been predicting it would be a breakthrough election that would result in their numbers at Holyrood swelling to double figures for the first time.

Mr Harvie confirmed the Greens have officially requested to view all the spoiled ballots. "We have put in a Freedom of Information request to all returning officers to look at the ballot papers. Any inquiry must look at the ballot papers themselves, and not just the process. We need to look at the papers to find out why so many were spoiled."

The party's strategy was not to contest first-past-the-post Holyrood seats and instead appeal to electors for their regional list vote.

Mr Harvie, who placed a £50 bet that his party's number of MSPs would rise, said the successful SNP campaign was responsible for voters deserting the Greens.

He said: "We were hoping to make progress in the parliamentary election and there is no question we've been squeezed until our pips squeaked. There are two of us in there and it's obviously great to be re-elected, but for the national party it's a disappointing result. On the flip side, we're getting very good local results, so it's swings and roundabouts for us."

Mr Harvie added: "The two factors I think are behind this are the very successful SNP strategy on the regional vote, effectively turning it into a referendum on Alex Salmond as First Minister, and the vast number of spoiled and discarded papers."

The Greens now have no representation outside of Glasgow city and the Lothians. In the West of Scotland region, the party won a 3% share with 8152 votes, which was down on its 2003 result, when it polled 14,544. On neither occasion did it poll enough for a seat.

The story was the same in Central Scotland, where the Green vote fell from 12,248 in 2003 to 7204, which was just 2.5% of the votes cast.

In 2003, Mark Ruskell picked up a list seat for the Greens in the Mid Scotland and Fife region with 17,147 votes, a 6.9% share of the overall number cast. However, the party's share of the vote slipped by more than 3% this time and it managed to poll only 10,318 across the region.

Labour losing three constituency seats in the region - Stirling, Fife Central and Dunfermline West - killed off the Greens' hopes of retaining their list seat.

Other casualties included Chris Ballance in the South of Scotland region and Shiona Baird, who lost the party's list seat in the North East Scotland region.

The disappointing national result was mitigated by success in the local elections, which saw five Greens returned to sit on Glasgow City Council.

12:01am Saturday 5th May 2007

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