If anyone ever thought there would be a frenzied evening of vote counting culminating in the result around 10pm followed by the acceptance/concession speech by the winners and losers, it aint gonna happen here.

The local media play a pretty minor role in the collection, aggregation and dissemination of election results and the electoral authority don’t exactly make it easy either.

It looks like counting will take 3 to 5 days.  About 10% of votes have been counted by Sunday evening.  Dili vote counting has not even started yet.

Why, you ask.  Its all to do with the voting system.  The new voting rules put in place for these elections almost makes it mandatory to have all ballot boxes received in district counting centres before counting can start.  And there is a huge rigmarole associated with removing ballot papers from boxes, unfolding them (they are probably folded about 6 times so they can fit into the ballot box slot), grouping them into lots of 50 and randomising them.  And this happens before you even start counting.

Rupert would be most annoyed by the lack of ratings potential.