Mixed up ballot boxes, collapsing tables and rain-sodden voting slips … these are just some of the absurd problems that have held up the count for the Northern Ireland assembly elections, amid scenes reminiscent of a Father Ted episode. At the Mid Ulster and North Antrim count centre, election workers were sent home early – apparently, because there weren't enough chairs for them to sit on. Hairdryers had to be deployed in the Omagh centre to separate out the votes that had got drenched. And the West Tyrone vote declaration, when it finally came, was interrupted by the returning officer's mobile phone, which blasted out a burst of Guns N' Roses'" Sweet Child of Mine". It was that kind of night.

The results themselves, which continue to trickle in slowly, seemed almost secondary to the stuttering mechanics of the count. Although DUP and Sinn Féin supporters gave up their usual bullish cheers when party members were elected, and there were sporadic scenes of candidates being hoisted aloft on shoulders, this has been a quiet and underwhelming election. With the exception of a ridiculous schoolboy row over whether DUP leader Peter Robinson thought outgoing Sinn Féin education minister Caitriona Ruane was "great" ("a lie from hell", according to a pink-faced Robinson), there have been few raised voices, and the parties have been largely campaigning on everyday policy issues, rather than the constitutional question.

Perhaps, that is the explanation for the unusually poor turnout. In the 2007 assembly elections, turnout stood at 62%. This time round, it's at a historic low of 55% – possibly leaving the new government with the support of less than half the electorate. In the hyper-politicised North, where political parties count on the staunch, unquestioning loyalty of diehard voters, such apparent apathy and indifference is surprising. Lulled to tedium by the flawed but relatively stable setup at Stormont, it seems that many people in Northern Ireland can only be bothered to vote when it's a rabid tussle between orange and green. Normal, (semi-) functioning, everyday politics just doesn't turn them on. If there isn't a tribal fight, then what's the point?

Times are changing, even in Northern Ireland. There was clear evidence Friday night that some Sinn Féin voters were giving their second and third preference votes to the DUP, and vice versa. This would have been unthinkable in the past; it shows that the understanding between first minister Peter Robinson and deputy first minister Martin McGuinness (some call it cosy; others a carve-up) is secure and unassailable, and is now beginning to extend across their respective constituencies. Elsewhere, the uninspiring Ulster Unionist party appears to have blundered off into political oblivion, and the SDLP faces a struggle to hold its position. In North Antrim, the arch-critic of the powersharing arrangement at Stormont, Jim Allister, strode off grim-faced into the night, having failed to make the quota on the first count.

Bored, fretful and vaguely dissatisfied, Northern Ireland nonetheless shuffles on towards the future.