Tallies and Ganleys Stunt .

Sponge Bob

When tallies are done there is generally no reason why they are deliberately false. The parties want to manage their vote next time. In other words tallies are inherently honest although the odd spoil gets through .

I have seen a perfect tally done once at some general election in the 1980s , it was 100% accurate ....an astonishing feat . Padraig Conneely the Galway Mayor was in charge of it at the time IIRC .

Were one to check them , one party against the other , one will find a very small margin of error . Watching a tally as a box is opened , one person normally calls ( the nearest one) and everybody else ticks away.

No one party monopolises the calls, co operation is the norm at a tally.

When the Euro Tally was done in Galway Ganley came out of it very well in the City , topping some boxes comfortably . He would probably get a seat in Dáil Eireann in Galway West based on the performance.

However Ganley and his ( largely paid) lackeys never did a full tally . Labour FF SF and FG did in Galway .

Yet Ganley was allowed to make outrageous claims despite having no evidence for these claims . Ganley at one point said that 20,000 of his votes were in other persons bundles.

It is time that each party/candidate appoints a Tallymaster for the likes of a Euro constituency and that the Tallymaster be there for the count . If they are prepared to swear on oath over the accuracy of their figures,and how they got the figures , than by all means have a recount like the one Ganley got .

There is also a case to be made for the Tallymaster or their deputy spending the night with the boxes along with the Guards who mind them ....should they wish . I believe it is not necessary but I see no issue with it .

But allowing counts to be derailed like Ganley did the North West count ...with no evidence .... calls the whole electoral process and the integrity of those who conduct it into grave disrepute and must not be allowed ever again .

Thoughts anyone ?

JonathanAnon

Is anyone really surprised to see Ganley trying to bend the rules? I think anybody has the right to ask for a recount if they genuinely feel that there has been an error. He received bad press from the other elected officials, who did not feel that Ganley was not being genuine.

I think the real question is how did they get it wrong by 3000 votes, is this not amazing??

Sully

A recount was orderd in Waterford City East as one of the FF candidates knew she would be knocked out soon. The mistake? 1 vote, benefiting neither candidate in the running. The FF candidate was eliminated leaving one more FF candidate (the only one in the city now) hanging on with Cullen watching like a hawk. He got in by about 8 votes.

solice

I think the problem, as Ganley saw it, was that the tallies (note plural) for the Euro North West constituency was carried out in all the regional centres and not at the one time in Castlebar. This was the same in all the constituencies.

Basically when a tally is being done, it is noted what box is being opened as well as the votes themselves. This allows the political parties work out, geographically, where they get their votes from. The boxes are opened in front of the tally people. But there was no serious effort by any political party to do a serious tally on the euros because they were taking place all over the constituency and not just in the one centre. I think Harkin made the best effort for a tally.

When the boxes were opened in Castlebar on Sunday, they were opened away from the tally people. It wasnt completly transparent. The returning officers excuse was that the tally should have taken place on the Saturday when the boxes were first opened.

I think a mistake was made by the powers that be. As I voted I thought it unusual that I put both ballot papers into the one box. There should have been seperate boxes for euro and local. The local box going to the local centre and the euro box going to the euro count centre. This would have allowed for accurate tallies.

Ganley was right to do what he did, after all he did find 3,000 extra votes, but alas for Ganley, they werent his.

Sponge Bob

A recount is fair enough where there is one vote in it , no tally may be expected to be that accurate . They will certainly show up 1000s if done properly and if admissible .

solice

Sponge Bob wrote: »

A recount is fair enough where there is one vote in it , no tally may be expected to be that accurate . They will certainly show up 1000s if done properly and if admissible .

But the tally wasnt done properly, in any of the euro constituencies!

Sponge Bob

It was done in Galway ..I believe . Maybe not properly though .

P. Breathnach

Sponge Bob wrote: »

... It is time that each party/candidate appoints a Tallymaster for the likes of a Euro constituency and that the Tallymaster be there for the count ...

Better still: have one neutral tallymaster who supervises the whole operation. Give that person a better-sounding title, something like Returning Officer.

Tallymen can function because our vote counting process is transparent. Party representatives (and others) can witness the process. That includes getting sight of the voting papers, and then they can note and count what they see.

What's the purpose of tallies? The media and the public use them to satisfy curiosity. That's harmless, and not to be taken too seriously.

Party operatives use them to analyse voting patterns box by box. I am not happy about this. They can use what they know about many people to infer how others probably voted. I once had a party worker tell me how Herself and I probably voted. That's something we don't tell one another, although we probably could guess fairly accurately. I find the box-by-box scrutiny of papers intrusive on voter privacy.

Sponge Bob

P. Breathnach wrote: »

Party operatives use them to analyse voting patterns box by box. I am not happy about this. They can use what they know about many people to infer how others probably voted. I once had a party worker tell me how Herself and I probably voted. That's something we don't tell one another, although we probably could guess fairly accurately. I find the box-by-box scrutiny of papers intrusive on voter privacy.

That is precisely why they are done P and precisely why they are iffy ...and iffier the smaller the box .

One way around this is to pool smaller boxes into larger ones , eg the 20 votes on Inishwiggle are thrown into the box from Ballymagob first .

Set a floor of 300 votes per box or pool of boxes before the tally is allowed to be done . That satisfies both transparency and privacy requirements to my mind .

This also happens in the census . Where populations are small the data is lumped in with a nearby area for privacy .

brettmirl

Sponge Bob wrote: »

It was done in Galway ..I believe . Maybe not properly though .

The constituency is a lot bigger than just Galway!

Scofflaw

3,000 votes out of 495,000 is, what, 0.6% error? That's amazingly accurate for a manual count. There are plenty of people who wouldn't manage that small a margin of error totting up a restaurant bill.

cordially,
Scofflaw