Traditional Jim has DUP worried

Derry political leaders prepare to cast their votes on Thursday....in the process braving the new polling 'polis' put in Foyle and West Belfast to watch over the natives.

Disturbing reports reach me from West Belfas of one 'steward' accosting a lady representing SF in the polling station. More on that anon. And of course, there is now confusion about where authority resides in the polling station with the officer in charge or with this new force.

And as for the election, it's clear the overall vote was down and the only juicy titbit being thrown around for the pundits in both South Belfast and West Belfast was that the TUV leader Jim Allister was doing well. But surely not as well as the 70,000 votes some pundits were predicting for him.

I spent a little while with Alex Maskey outside Holy Rosary School Polling Station off Sunnyside Street — a transformed now mixed area of the city which was monocultural when I was at Queen's in the late seventies — and at St Teresa's Polling Station in West Belfast where the usual late-evening rush was noticably absent.

Of course, a part of that is due to the fact that it's more and more difficult to actually get on — and stay on — the electoral register. You can't deny people the franchise or make the business of casting your vote an ordeal and expect voter numbers to rise.

More light should be shed on those areas in coming week when we publish figures from the Electoral Office on:
The number of voters who applied up to the 19 May late registration deadline only to have their applications rejected.
The number of applications for postal and proxy votes rejected and where those applicants live.
The cost of the Electoral Office court defence of its rejection of the vote to two young West Belfast men.