Sebastian Coe yesterday dismissed any notion of conspiracy theories after a second ballot was required to elect vice-presidents of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) at the world governing body’s congress.

Sergey Bubka, one of the men viewed as a potential successor to president Lamine Diack, initially failed to earn election as one of the four vice-presidents, boosting Coe’s chances to do so instead.

Five candidates were standing for the four positions, with London 2012 chairman Coe elected along with Dahlan Al-Hamad, Robert Hersh and Abby Hoffman before doubts over the electronic voting system led to Diack ordering a re-run with manual voting.

The system first came under scrutiny following the attempted election of a new treasurer, with more votes cast than the number of member federations present.

When the manual votes were eventually counted and verified – after a lengthy delay as scrutineers tried to reconcile a discrepancy of two votes and conducted a recount – Bubka was elected alongside Coe, Al-Hamad and Hersh, with Hoffman missing out.

The number of votes for Coe, Al-Hamad and Hersh were all very similar to the first ballot, but Bubka’s increased from 118 to 159, while Hoffman’s fell from 175 to 122.

Diack, who was unopposed in the presidential election but also went through a second ballot (polling 169 to 29), said: “I am not embarrassed by the election.

“We would have preferred the technology to work better but it has failed us and we had to go back to a manual vote. There was just a technical glitch – there is nothing else involved and we have to live with it.”

Coe, who became a Conservative MP in 1992, said: “It wasn’t technologically the best start to the day but we got there in the end.”