It's become a highly anticipated moment of the ABC's election night coverage — the point in the vote count when Antony Green is prepared to call it.

Celebrating 30 years at the ABC this year and preparing for his 11th year of federal election coverage, Green tells how he went from being a researcher and computer programmer to the ABC's chief elections analyst.

Talking politics and writing code

In 1989, I had finished my politics studies (Bachelor of Economics with Honours in Politics and a Bachelor of Science in Pure Mathematics and Computer Science at the University of Sydney), I was back in the computer industry writing software and I had also embarked on a post-graduate degree in econometrics.

Computer programming was well paid but boring, and I was looking for something else to do.

I was looking at trainee economist jobs when I saw an ad from the ABC offering a six-month job as an election researcher.

It was a big pay cut but it looked interesting, and I always thought I could go back to economics afterwards.

There were 150 applicants and eight were interviewed, including several people with PhDs, but legendary ABC producer Ian Carroll picked me.

Green made his television debut in 1991, which resulted in a small on-air role on election night. ( ABC News )

I had no media background, but I had the political knowledge, enthusiasm and was streets ahead of the other applicants in terms of computer knowledge.

I always had the suspicion Ian was looking for someone who could talk in the same language as the engineers who ran the ABC's rather ageing computer system in those days.

My two main jobs were to try to implement Ian's vision of how he wanted the ABC computer graphics to look for the 1990 federal election, and to compile a book of background material on the candidates and contests.

The coverage in 1990 went very well — it was a close election and went into the early hours of the next morning.

I should have left the ABC two weeks after the election, but Andrew Olle, Paul Lyneham and Kerry O'Brien insisted I should be re-employed.

So, the ABC kept me on with a job to redesign its election computer and I gave up on completing my econometrics degree.

Green says ABC stalwart Kerry O'Brien was instrumental in kickstarting his career at the broadcaster. ( ABC News )

A shaky start on TV

In early 1991, I was put on camera for the first time with Quentin Dempster to talk about the implications of a major redistribution of state electoral boundaries in NSW.

Despite my obvious nervousness, they said I sounded authoritative and I started to take a small on-air role on election night, and it built from there.

I always remember my first interview because I had to use a pointer on a map, and of course I was so nervous that the pointer was shaking.

The director, Janie Lalor, came down and gave me my first big tip in television.

"Lean the pointer on the map and it won't shake," she said.

My first big role on election night was the 1993 federal election.

It was the first federal election to use the computer system I designed and it called the return of the Keating government early, earlier than many were prepared to believe.

In the early days, there were lots of technical challenges. ( ABC News )

Months of work behind each election broadcast

The set-up for an election is enormous and when elections come around, that is the main part of my job, rather than providing campaign commentary.

The database has to be built up with the candidates, polling places and past results.

There are preference formulas to load.

There are special codings to control the television graphics and, these days, the website.

Some of the work can start years earlier.

Calculating the impact of state and federal redistributions is done 18 months ahead of the election and is an essential starting point for the election night coverage — that work isn't always understood by people.

The main part of Green's job in preparing for election day is building the database. ( ABC News: Robert Estherby )

The election night system's predictions are automated, driving the seat predictions that appear on the graphics, on tickers at the bottom of the screen, and on the website.

I can override individual results or modify how preferences work in individual seats, but essentially the formula we implemented back in the early 1990s still makes the vast majority of seat calls.

When I started covering elections in 1989, there was no internet and the only interest in computers was for the television and radio coverage on the night.

These days, we also publish a results website and this has hugely complicated the set-up, even if we get much more data than we used to.

There is also the website which I originally designed myself 15 years ago, based on the original books of notes I used to produce.

To this day, the basic information architecture of the website is the one I developed, though it has had to undergo change to cope with the plethora of portable electronic devices accessing the internet these days.

The other challenge is maintaining the standards of what we produce.

There is a vast array of information you can now pull down and publish, but you have to give a bit of editorial thought to what is important or you just end up with pages of content with no meaning.

Green on set for the 2007 federal election night coverage alongside Kerry O'Brien, Julia Gillard and Nick Minchin. ( ABC News )

Memorable election night moments

The most memorable elections are the ones that did not go as expected — Keating's victory in 1993 and Nick Greiner losing his majority in NSW in 1991.

Both of those were memorable as my first state and federal elections, but also memorable for the results.

Since then, I'd say the shock defeat of the Kennett government at the 1999 Victorian election, a result that has had implications for the state's political history ever since.

The defeat of the Northern Territory's Country Liberals government in 2001 was astonishing, as was the victory of Labor in Queensland in 2015.

Probably the one election night moment I remember more than most was calling the Howard government's Senate majority on the night of the 2004 federal election.

I had a Senate calculator that I had written myself and operated on my laptop.

It allowed me to call the victory of Family First's Steve Fielding in Victoria and Barnaby Joyce's victory in Queensland.

I still remember Nick Minchin refusing to believe me on that later call. There was general astonishment that it was possible to make sense of a Senate result on election night.

After that success, I wrote specifications for an online version of the Senate calculator, and to this day it has been one of my proudest achievements on the website, a classic example of taking a vast amount of data and working out what it means.

Green testing his touch screen ahead of the Victoria Votes 2018 election night coverage. ( ABC News: Natasha Johnson )

Technological challenges

In the early days, there were breaks in data feeds and moments when computers died.

I had a regular election campaign nightmare of being on-air when the computers all went down and there was no data.

The last time that happened was in Victoria in 2010 when we had a power outage.

That was the last time we did election coverage from a tally room.

We now do election night coverage from a studio or the foyer of ABC buildings, which means we have to create our own atmosphere, but it does ensure we have more reliable power and data links.

No data, no election coverage.

These days, the toughest task is just trying to get all the bits of technology talking to each other.

It is only when you get to the first rehearsals that everything is put together.

Green prepares to go on air for the 2014 Victorian Election night broadcast. ( ABC News )

Elections give power to the powerless

On a personal level, I find election night fascinating as you are having a vast amount of data thrown at you and you have to make sense of what it is telling you.

That's what I designed the ABC's computer system to do and to this day it still does, sometimes to my amazement.

But having studied politics, I also find elections interesting at a more philosophical level.

In democracies, every few years the great and powerful of the nation have to put their fate into the hands of the public.

People are cynical about politics and elections, but the cynical should go and try to live under the alternative where you don't get to choose those in power.

In 1947, Winston Churchill told the House of Commons: "Many forms of government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No-one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."

Two years earlier, after leading his country to victory in war, Churchill's Conservatives had been smashed at the first post-war election.

Churchill had experience with how the great and powerful can be brought down by democracy.

It is the power of powerless individuals, voting in private and without intimidation, and how it can produce dramatic change without violence that is always the most uplifting part of elections.

I'll never forget the long lines of people who lined up for hours to vote in the first post-apartheid election.

Having been denied that right for so long, they were determined to exercise their vote.

Even if the governments you elect do not meet all expectations, under democracy you get the right to try again in a couple of years' time.