As election counts go last week's Northern Ireland Assembly election count seemed to be one of the slowest in recent memory. However, a 'look and see' visit by Douglas Bain, the Chief Electoral Officer to Omagh Count Centre on Friday reinforced his personal commitment to a switch to electronic voting next time around.

Following last Wednesday's election counting began at 9.00am there for both Fermanagh South Tyrone and West Tyrone Constituency.

From the outset, it was widely predicted the first results would start arriving from early afternoon. However, there was still no sign of a result at four o'clock. Asked how the count was going, Martin Fox, Deputy Returning Officer for both constituency's said 'Slowly'. "Our main preoccupation is getting the thing right. We are not going to sacrifice accuracy for speed", he said.

As to how the count works, Martin Fox said first was the verification of the ballot papers where the counters count the number of ballot papers in each box and check that all the numbers tally.

The next step is the process of sorting out first preference votes which are then bundled up and stacked beside each candidate's name. The counters also total the number of spoiled votes there are - this is when they cannot ascertain where the voter's first preference vote lies.

On Thursday afternoon, Martin Fox reported both counts were progressing well and, at that point, he predicted there should be some results before tea time.

Throughout Thursday evening and Friday, Mr Fox, as Deputy Returning Officer, made a number of declarations from the count room and, where appropriate, deemed candidates elected. However, he stressed a candidate is not officially elected until the end of the count when the official election results are declared. Thursday's count ended at 8.00pm, while others across the North went well into the night. The second day ended at 4.30 when Mr Fox formally announced the 12 winners, six from Fermanagh/South Tyrone, six from West Tyrone.