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A NEWSREADER’S BLOG

On voting day, Wednesday 7th March I was working early. It was a very cold, but sunny day with temperatures down to freezing. Martina Purdy did our early piece, reporting around 250 candidates vying for 108 seats, with more than one MILLION people eligible to vote in the election. There are 1550 ballot boxes in 626 locations. The smallest voting station is on Rathlin Island with 89 voters on the register. A GAA hall in South Down and an Orange Hall in North Antrim are being used as polling stations. In the last Assembly Election in 2003, 10,000 votes were spoilt by voters not filling in their voting forms properly.

DUP leader Ian Paisley had to make his way through hordes of foreign journalists and camera crews as he arrived to vote in east Belfast. At one point a photographer was knocked over. Crews were there from all across Europe, North America and Japan. Interest in Spain was said by one journalist to be huge. Meanwhile, the Sinn Fein President, Gerry Adams has voted in west Belfast. He, too, was pursued by dozens of foreign camera crews and journalists.

Counting got underway on the Thursday morning with the 1550 voting paper boxes being opened at 9 am in eight counting centers. The turnout figure will be known at lunchtime (64% in 2003).

VOTE '07 went on the air at midday with Wendy Austin and Seamus McKee in the studio and Conor Bradford at the main counting center in the Kings Hall. The first result was expected around 2 pm, but was 45 minutes late with Peter Robinson and Naomi Long being elected in east Belfast.

Driving into work I passed the entrance to the Stormont Hotel on the Upper Newtownards Road in east Belfast and waiting to get out was David Dunseath, the presenter of Talkback, who was having a day-off due to the election coverage. There he was trying to get OUT of Stormont while 108 others were trying to get INTO it!

Shortly after 3 pm Sinn Fein got their first seat - Gerry Kelly in north Belfast - along with the DUP's Nigel Dodds. At tea-time (5.30 pm) 15 of the 108 seats were declared with DUP 8, SF 5, SDLP 1, and AP 1. The UUP has yet to gain a seat.

Results kept coming in from the eight count centers across the province. It mid-evening and my computer screen tells me - well actually I have to read it! - that 33.333% of the votes are in. As my father would say; when I was at school - and that's over EIGHTY years ago – that’s a third. The UUP have just taken their first seat and it's still neck-and-neck with the DUP and Sinn Fein with 12 seats each.

During the evening it flashed up on my computer screen that the one MILLIONTH ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ news online page had been viewed. That was after 315,000 viewed it today for the election results.

At the close of the night, when I packed up and headed for home, 53 of the 108 seats had been declared - 20 seats each for the DUP and Sinn Fein; 5 each for the SDLP and UUP and 3 seats for the Alliance Party.

There’s more! Yes, another day of results and another 53 plus two seats to be filled. I’m beyond myself with excitement!