How do you convince the population that the result is fair?

The answer is you ask the world to watch.

Over the last 10 days I travelled to Myanmar as part of a 40-person international observer team from Australia. The group – teachers, doctors, lawyers, IT executives and academics – volunteered and paid their own way. It was pulled together by Professor Damien Kingsbury, of Deakin University, who had organised a similar mission to monitor the 2012 East Timor elections.

Many of the Timor volunteers had returned for this second mission to the country once known as Burma.

We met for the first time for briefings in Yangon, where the election process was explained to us and our role also firmly explained. It was to watch only. If we saw mistakes or worse, we were to take a note only but we were not to get involved. And if there was trouble, we were to avoid it at all costs.

Timor had posed its own logistical problems, because of its terrible roads and low levels of literacy.

But Myanmar was different. The unspoken question was whether the military-backed government would seek to somehow subvert the process.

"The observers will be watching the election process, to see whether it really is free and fair, whether there is any intimidation and whether the counting process is honest," Kingsbury said.

There was reason to worry. Myanmar has a history of dealing violently with dissent. In 1990 the country's first elections in 30 years were held, leading to a landslide win for the National League for Democracy. The response of the military was to refuse to hand over power, place the party's leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, under house arrest and to jail many of her supporters.

But since 2010, when a military-backed civilian government was installed, Myanmar had moved through a seven-step program towards democracy.

Our team of three travelled up to Kalaw, in Shan State about 600 kilometres to the north of the Myanmar's largest city and former capital, Yangon. Kalaw is a picturesque former British colonial hill town renowned for its cool climate, it's the centre for a diverse range of tribal villages.

]]>

Kalaw had an added complication. It sprawls over several ridges and valleys with a confusing tangle of roads. It seemed a daunting task, until we were introduced to the ward administrator of block three, U Kyio Win, whose job was to organise the polling stations in his area.

In his 60s, U Kyio Win was the Burmese equivalent of a country town mayor. He knew everybody in town and his explanations were interrupted by a constantly ringing mobile phone. But he was genuinely glad to see us and solved our dilemma by driving us around to most of the 13 polling stations.

By the end of last Saturday – the day before the election – we had met most of the election officials at each booth. Preparations were going well as far as we could see. In modest wooden schoolhouses with glassless windows and ancient blackboards, polling places were improvised.

School desks had been repurposed, coloured tablecloths denoted the different votes, while cardboard screens were erected to provide privacy to voters. Ballots were carefully torn from numbered books and voters used a special stamp to mark just one candidate on each ballot.

One area we visited didn't have a suitable community hall, so the street was blocked off and scaffolding and tarpaulins erected to create a temporary polling place. It had a festive air, with life going on around it in cafes and houses.

On election day, we were up at 5am in time for the start of voting at 6am. It was perhaps 14 degrees but the locals considered it bitterly cold and turned up in beanies and warm coats. There was a quiet excitement as they began lining up.

Final voter rolls had been on display for several days and virtually everyone arrived with small slips of white paper – their voter registration cards. After establishing their identity, they went to cast their first vote for the lower house, then the second, then the third, and sometimes a fourth if they were from an ethnic minority. The final step was to dip their fingers in indelible ink that wouldn't wash off for four days. I know because we tested it to make sure it was the real thing.

As the sun rose over the school, the first voter was a middle-aged Intha man, who told me with tears in his eyes: "I have been waiting for this moment for 67 years."

He had been born in 1948, the year of Burma's independence. Now he was witnessing what he hoped would will be Myanmar's transition to democracy – though under the constitution 25 per cent of the seats in parliament remain reserved for the military.

Daw Sein Thein May, 61, a retired English teacher, stopped to thank us for coming to be observers. "I am just so happy," she said.

She was accompanied by her two nieces in their late 20s. One had made the 11-hour bus journey from Yangon to vote in her home town; the other had flown back from Korea, rather than risk the vagaries of a pre-poll voting system they did not trust.

By 9am the queues at the school had swelled to several hundred deep as voters flocked to cast their votes. Some stood in line for two hours waiting their turn. Old ladies in their 80s were helped to the front of the line and up the rough steps.

Only as they left did their excitement show. A smile would transform their faces as they held their inked fingers aloft. It was deeply moving.

The only irregularity I witnessed was at a military base. In keeping with the undertakings from the government, we were allowed access to the polling place in a wooden school in the grounds of what had once been a grand old colonial house. The polling place was run scrupulously and all party observers were present. But there was only a trickle of voters. As we left we witnessed about 80 men and women gathered on a parade ground, being lectured to by a man.

Later we heard from two British embassy observers, who witnessed the count at this booth, that 99 per cent of the votes were for the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party.

But even apparent coercion of military employees would not be enough to stem the tide for change.

At 4pm, we settled in to watch the count at a polling station next to Kalaw's bustling market, where tribal people sell handicraft and farmers sit cross-legged selling vegetables, chickens, dried fish and chillies from large round aluminium trays.

The polling booths were mainly run by teachers, mostly women, who seemed to have a good grasp on what was required.

In the dim neon light, the school desks were rearranged, the blackboard dragged over, and a series of plastic washing baskets brought over to hold the count.

One election official brought us tea and bowls of shan noodles.

"Thank you," he said. "Thanks to the world for coming."

On one side of the desks were the officials, on the other a range of scrutineers: us, four voter representatives and party scrutineers. Each vote was called out, tallied on a sheet on the blackboard, and then placed in the correct washing basket. If a mistake was made, scrutineers made sure it was quickly remedied. It might have been low-tech, but there was no way this process could have been rigged.

At one stage we heard a loud bang outside the polling booth, which was open to the street. Everyone visibly flinched, including the head official who had been calling the votes in her best schoolteacher voice. But it was only a car backfiring, and everyone sighed in relief.

You could feel the excitement building as the National League for Democracy surged ahead. In our polling station in Kalaw, the vote was 70-30 in favour of the NLD. In some parts of Yangon it was closer to 90 per cent.

There were no wild celebrations in Kalaw, just a quiet jubilation.

But I, for one, will never take my right to vote for granted.