Drama of the long count is good for politics

After the ball is over, after the break of morn

After the dancers' leaving, after the stars are gone

Many a heart is aching, if you could read them all

Many the hopes that have vanished, after the ball.

If an election is a night in the dancehall, the count is when the lights are switched on. All is revealed and there is no place to hide. It is a scene of triumphs and disasters, and under the glare of the spotlight, both winners and losers find it hard to treat those two impostors just the same.

And oh lord it is a long day – and maybe more than one.

Those votes go in the boxes on Friday, they are waked overnight, and then brought to life the following morning. A count centre early in the morning has the feel of a spaghetti western’s final scene: no one around; eerily quiet; an odd bush blows around outside.

Then people start arriving, to count, to calculate, to commentate. With coffees in hand, people huddle and whisper. Tally people gather. Some of those are hardened veterans. Others are apprentices, eager to learn, or maybe just here to do a favour for a friend. The media hover, waiting for the feeding frenzy to begin. In the world of social media, everybody will want to be first.

Party high commands, positioned with their computers in little redoubts in the count centre, huddle and confer with the other side, and then give out the instructions to their own troops. Talliers – stickers identifying their loyalties – head off to their appointed boxes. Now that the battle is over, the job is to work together to find out the result before it is officially declared. There is pride in this, and often a grudging respect among political operatives towards their counterparts. And then the Returning Officer makes a declaration and off we go. The boxes spill open and the sorting starts. Every person tallying their box knows what that same box said in 2020. So very quickly the broad trend – if not the result – is known.

Social media posts flicker across many screens. Such and such a party are up, or down, by X per cent in such and such a box compared to 2020. Now is that because of a change in candidates and where they are from, or is this the revelation of the day ahead? And what does all that mean when there is an extra seat? The nation of elections nerds – and I am one – hold their breath.

There is a former Labour Party TD and Minister, Kevin Humphreys, whose posts in the immediate aftermath of the ballot boxes opening have become the most sought after election guide on social media. Kevin is a very astute judge of the public mood, but it is his particular ability to grasp immediately what a quick tally of a box means for the wider result which has gained him a wide following. You can expect on Saturday that every media outlet in Ireland will refresh their phones over and over to see what Kevin says round about 9.15am.

But even if that quick take again provides insight, it will be a long and often weary way from there to the actual outcome. Knowing the results doesn’t mean we know for sure who the government will be. Even if the government side (broadly defined) wins, the margin of their win and how they will get to form a government may take a long time to discern. On the other hand, if early tallies suggest that the government parties are going to have a bad day, then the whole business becomes an immediate game of speculation as to what government can be formed.

Locally, none of this early morning activity on Saturday will tell you much about who specifically will win the third seat in Mayo, let alone the fifth one. Early tallies will provide encouragement for some and concerns for others, but don’t think it will give the final answer. For one or two candidates, count day may well prove to be pretty routine – an easy win. For a bunch of others, the only question will be how many votes they ultimately end up with.

It's long and drawn out and hard on nearly everyone. Why then do we retain it?

People who like our electoral system will tell you its advantages at the drop of a hat. It is proportional, meaning that you get more or less the number of seats your percentage vote entitles you to. Voters can also vote for the candidate they most like, and then be sure that their vote will still be relevant if their Number One choice doesn’t do so well. As we all know, you vote in order of your preference. That sounds great and simple and clear, until you start explaining what the principle of the ‘last parcel’ means in practice when it comes to transferring votes.

The way that plays out through the count also gets people talking about politics. In an election where most people have spent their time trying to avoid doing so, it is a good thing that the electoral system and the count that brings it to life attracts so much attention. Yes, the count does have the feel of a race meeting, but when so few people are interested in politics and many treat it with contempt, it is important to have an occasion when people switch on, tune in, pay some heed to the details of how we decide who will govern us.

The count brings excitement, as votes move from one pile to the other. It brings drama, as hopes and dreams are made and dashed through tiny margins. It brings some cruelty, most especially when the count drags on, most especially for those who might win but ultimately don’t. They have put in all this effort, taken a lot of flak, which is then revealed to be for nought. Candidates must keep believing during the campaign, even when evidence piles up against them. Belief is no cushion when the hard wall of reality comes at them on the day of the count, or over the following drawn out days.

There will. of course, be a huge crowd there when all the seats are still in the pot and the important counts are about to be declared. The atmosphere will be excited and even charged.

But as one candidate after another is declared elected or eliminated, the place begins to drain out, until only the die-hard partisans of the remaining candidates can be found, looking like the last Roman Centurion on Hadrian’s Wall. That process can drag on for days, with recounts and rows, an ordeal for bone-tired candidates - like asking a couple of boxers after 15 rounds to settle it over three more. Even with a Dáil seat up for grabs, if the national result has become clear, that can look a little desultory after a few days.

That is, of course, unless the fate of a new government rests on who wins the last seat in Mayo. Then the count centre will take on a rather different atmosphere, no matter how long it all goes on. Your vote – your transfer – might well just decide it. That’s something to think about before Friday... before the ball is over.