In Newry and Armagh, Seamus Mallon's posters were torn down systematically by Sinn Fein. In Down South, Eddie McGrady reported intimidation of voters.
In West Tyrone, thugs threw missiles at Brid Rodgers, ordered her out of "our territory", threatened her canvassers and intimidated people from putting SDLP posters in their windows.
What worried her most was electoral malpractice, not just personation but massive misuse of postal votes.
She was jeered as she entered the count and barracked afterwards when she said "some of the tactics that were used had no place in a modern democracy".
In Fermanagh and South Tyrone, a Sinn Fein majority of 53 resulted not just from bullying and fiddling and forging but from physically forcing staff to keep a polling station open for almost an extra hour so republican late-comers could vote.
After a particularly frightening encounter, Ms Rodgers spoke of "fascists" and "Provos", language which for the last few years has been regarded as being "unhelpful".
And was she accurate. Behind the smooth, media-friendly veneer, with the help of the IRA, the Sinn Fein campaign was run on good old fascist principles: to gain power you use any means at your disposal which will bring about the desired result.
This played fine with the electorate. A majority of Northern Ireland nationalists voted Sinn Fein. Between the media and the grapevine, most of those would have known about the widespread intimidation.
Many also knew that the IRA controls Sinn Fein; that its fiefdoms throughout Northern Ireland are run by terror; and that its members occasionally murder a drug-dealer or a dissident republican. It also beats and shoots its opponents, as well as those deemed anti-social, and runs smuggling rackets which bankrupt legitimate traders. It also robs the taxpayer.
But these voters did not care. Sinn Fein is cool; Sinn Fein is sexy; Sinn Fein is energetic; Sinn Fein is the future.
When all is said and done, the IRA is still "our boys". Who cares about democracy? Or morality?
"Now, at last, I understand what happened to the Weimar Republic," a friend said on Saturday.
The DUP, of course, fielded its fair share of thugs. Some of its hangers-on tried to assault David and Daphne Trimble.
Loyalist paramilitaries also kill and maim. But you don't see Michael Stone, who murdered mourners in Milltown Cemetery, standing for Westminster.
You don't see the UVF's interpreter, David Ervine - Iveagh House's favourite unionist - pulling in more than a derisory vote.
The unionist population's support for the DUP is mainly a protest vote against the spinelessness of both governments in standing up to republicans.
It is also a protest at the emasculation of a police force which saved Northern Ireland from anarchy to appease paramilitaries who between them have murdered more than 300 of its officers.
Recently, after a legal parade in Portadown by a handful of Orange children, republicans attacked RUC officers so viciously that 57 officers were hospitalised with serious injuries, including broken legs and arms. Some injuries were caused by concrete blocks thrown at close range. This helped anti-agreement candidates no end.
Voters in the Republic seem increasingly unbothered about either democracy or morality.
Down south, the IRA shoots the odd drug-dealer, beatings and shootings are becoming increasingly common in certain areas, the IRA's "Army Council" refuses to decommission and the Sinn Fein vote goes up.
Caoimhghin O Caolain TD may represent a party linked to the IRA but at least he has never been active in it.
Sinn Fein is confident that Martin Ferris will be one of its successful candidates.
Mr Ferris is proud of his IRA service. He has been jailed for assault and served 10 years for smuggling arms.
He has waged a personal and - to put it delicately - unorthodox campaign against drug-dealers. Now, we are told, he and his party workers recover stolen property by "persuasion".
The Minister for Justice is horrified at this challenge to the State and the Garda denounces his activities as vigilantism. Yet Mr Ferris remains defiant and believes, almost certainly rightly, that his neighbours respect his iron fist even more than the velvet glove he dons for a compliant RTE.
A few naive souls in the Republic are still asking whether political parties are prepared to go into coalition with Sinn Fein while it is still the creature of the IRA.
As Mr Ferris pointed out in a recent interview, the question is whether Sinn Fein is prepared to go into coalition with parties it regards as being tainted by sleaze.
And hardly anyone laughs.
The Irish electorate looks like choosing to elect to five or six seats a party which has historically supported murder, destruction, armed robbery, intimidation and fraud.
Using whatever illegal or violent methods it can get away with, Sinn Fein seems set to win power from an electorate as morally blind as that of the North.
Sinn Fein will not go into coalition, of course. Loftily, it will stay outside and strike hard bargains which will win it further electoral support.
It aims, as it keeps telling us, to be the largest party in Ireland.
It stands for ethnic nationalism, sectarianism and a half-baked, old-fashioned socialism and is fuelled by hatred. Yet it has energy, drive, charisma and ruthlessness.
The Irish love the whiff of cordite and - most important of all - republican leaders discovered long ago that if you get the rhetoric right, you can literally get away with murder.
The Irish people are accused of sleepwalking into voting down the Nice Treaty.
If they follow the lead of Northern nationalists and sleepwalk into voting for fascists, it will be a catastrophe.
I'm glad I live in a country where William Hague is thought to be an extremist.
Ruth Dudley Edwards is a journalist and commentator based in London