The election to An Seanad Éireann ended on 27 April 2011, and the count completed late on 28 April 2011. Within twenty seconds, followers of my Twitter stream of consciousness had the final results, including transfers and percentages. The website for An Seanad Éireann is still waiting for the results.
Two important things emerged from the use of technology on the day: first, the iPad is a perfect tool for the creation of the spreads needed to calculate results. Second is that the spreadsheet software itself needs to get better for serious on-the-fly usage.
