BY the time I got to the office, after what had been a long election night, the dawn chorus was underway.

Typing up the Harborough district results, I heard the clinking of milk bottles from a delivery van pulling up outside the shop below.

After the events of the previous eight hours or so - a long waiting game punctured with nerve-shreddingly tense moments and, finally, a dramatic outcome - these were the soothing sounds of a new day beginning. While it was a new dawn for some candidates, it was the end of the day for others.

It was the late 1990s and I’d worked through the night to cover the local election. After all the votes had been counted, someone demanded a re-count, so it had turned into a long night. But I remember enjoying it all. As a reporter covering a largely rural patch of south Leicestershire, I knew all the candidates, having covered countless council meetings. Hovering with my notepad and pen, I joined the little band of journalists from other papers, radio and TV; a Blitz spirit setting in as we got through endless paper cups of coffee and tried to gage the outcome.

Then at around 4.30am, came the victory/pain/humiliation of the results, and a frantic round of speeches and quickfire interviews, before hoofing it back to my desk to write it all up. With a deadline looming, there wasn’t time to drive to the city centre newsroom, so I sat in our little satellite office (back in the days when newspapers had such things) sending my report over to the newsdesk - having turned the night’s events into 400 words of tight copy, at the same time as the milk was being delivered.

It can be exciting, covering elections as a journalist. You’re in the thick of all the action, with rising tension and drama, typing up a live blog/report on a laptop - or, in my day, phoning in the results initially then racing back to the T&A newsroom in the early hours of the morning. I remember the place buzzing with activity, as reporters returned from election counts to write it all up and a team of sub editors laid out pages of coverage and results. With pizzas ordered in, and the editor loosening his tie, we’d push on through the night, finally winding up just as the day shift was beginning.

While you’re reading the election coverage in newspapers or online, spare a thought for the bleary-eyed journos who have spent the night gathering it all, and making sense of it, for you to digest.

When an election is announced and approaching, the focus is on the candidates and the campaigns. Nobody pays much attention to those who work tirelessly behind the scenes to make polling day happen. As the General Election unfolds today, a whole army of people will have been at polling stations since around 6am, setting everything up before polls opened at 7am. As voters arrive throughout the day, it is these dedicated teams, stationed in church halls and community centres, who greet them, mark them on registers, issue ballot papers, show them where to go, answer queries and keep a watchful eye over proceedings.

Then, when the polling stations close at 10pm, thousands of ballot counters will be gearing up for a long night. The action starts at the polling station, where the clerks get ballot boxes into presiding officers’ cars as quickly as they can. At leisure centres and other venues across the country, teams of runners are waiting to take the boxes inside - then the counting begins, with every vote counted by hand. The ballot papers are verified, sorted and counted, under intense scrutiny. It is these diligent counters who patiently sort the votes from the papers bearing scrawled obscenities, Mickey Mouse candidates and other spoils.

This series of rituals, carried out by thousands of people in various polling roles, is what keeps the wheels of democracy turning on election day - and night. There are 40,000 polling stations across the UK, staffed by more than 150,000 people working hard to make sure the election process is fair and open.

They won’t be the ones hogging the headlines tomorrow - but none of it could happen without them.