Should the SNP leadership contest be stopped?

Yesterday saw the final televised debate between the three contenders for leader of the SNP and First Minister of Scotland. Voting will end and the winner will be declared on 27 March. 

Or will it? Those sick of this increasingly tawdry contest should prepare themselves: it may have a way to go yet. There are calls for the contest to be halted, restarted or at least reset. And if that doesn’t happen, there is a risk that the winner will not be recognised by certain sectors of the party. There is a talk of a legal challenge from pro-independence blog Wings Over Scotland (which is mulling crowdfunding such a move). 

The reasons are simple. There are serious concerns about the integrity of the process and about who will actually be voting/has already voted. There is a discrepancy between the declared number of SNP members (72,000) and the number of registered voters given to the online voting company (Mi-Voice) tasked with administering the contest (78,000, according to the Mail on Sunday).