Irish elections - what's not to like? I've never been less enthusiastic heading to the voting booth than I was last Thursday. I was all of a muddle. Ideally I wanted the government returned, but I wasn't sure that was likely. I liked the idea of a Fine Gael & Labour coalition a lot more than a Fianna Fail & Labour coalition. My reasoning is probably just confused, but to my thinking FF-Labour was more likely to "throw it all away" than was FG-Labour-Green, the latter having more to prove regarding safe management, etc.
Despite that I was very enthusiastic following the returns. The best argument against electronic voting is that it would eliminate the two days of fun that the counting provides. I tuned in on Friday around 6pm (had listened to the radio some before that) and didn't turn it off until 2am. Far more entertainment than the Late Late Show could ever hope to provide.
I think the benefits of Proportional Representation are way overstated, but there's no doubt that the complex vote-count process is the main reason why the counts are such great entertainment. First we have exit polls, but PR makes them less reliable. Then we have the first indications from the tallymen. I'm not entirely sure what a tallyman is, but they all seem to have a fantastic ability to look at the ballots and process what they see as each ballot flashes past them and translate that into rough estimates of the counts.
Then the results slowly trickle in and dozens of various analysts pronounce judgment on what we're seeing as the first returns come in and what's likely to unfold as each of the round of counting produces surpluses, exclusions and transfers. There are party-line transfers and geographical transfers. Eventually speculation gives way to hard evidence as the votes are finally all counted and we have the final result.
