THE American-styled electronic voting and counting pioneered in the UK in Swindon's two council by-elections yesterday was lucky for Labour.

Sinead Darker and Des Moffatt held the Central and Western wards for Labour with comfortable majorities, defying all the pundits' forecasts of close calls in both elections.

But the biggest loser of the night was undoubtedly the new technology that replaced hand-counting.

Predictions that the count would be "done and dusted" by ten o'clock proved to be wildly optimistic. Some votes had to be hand-counted because they were not clearly markeed and then re-run through the automatic machine, doubling-up on the process.

As electronic counting caused chaos in Florida during the last presidential election, so it produced its fair share of controversy in Swindon in front of nail-biting representatives from the Deputy Prime Minister's Office.

Council leader Mike Bawden (Con, Old Town and Lawns) denounced the count as "flawed" and said he would be writing to John Prescott possibly demanding that both elections be "declared null and void" and be re-run. The leader of the Labour group, Coun Kevin Small (Western) accused Coun Bawden of "sour grapes".

In fairness, it has to be said that Coun Bawden condemned the process long before the result was announced.

"I'm over the moon," enthused Coun Small. "This has been an emotional night for me and the Western election, in particular, has been very personal.

" It means so much to me that we've held my dad's seat."

The Western by-election was caused by the death of Coun Keith Small, Kevin's father.

Labour's triumphs were a double whammy for the Conservatives who failed to win the overall majority on council they were looking for.

The make-up of the council is now: Conservatives 29, Labour 22, Liberal Democrats 8, leaving it 'hung'.

The Central ward electorate had to return to the polls for the second time in eight months because of the resignation of Labour's John Taylor.

Coun Bawden admitted that it had been a "disappointing" night for the Conservatives, but sought consolation in the fact that Labour's majority had been "halved" in Western.

Coun Mike Evemy (Eastcott), leader of the Liberal Democrats, was also disappointed that his candidate had not won in Central, but said ruefully: "That's the way of by-elections they're very unpredictable."

Winning Central ward candidate Sinead Darker said: "I'm thrilled to bits tonight. I was supported by a wonderful team.

"I was always confident, but never too much so because the Lib-Dems launched a very big challenge."

Michael Litchfield