I'm on the Electoral Register twice.

silverwood

For some reason, I'm actually on the electoral register twice. Once at my present address and again at a previous address (family home). I always get two polling cards as well. Obviously I always vote just once but I assume that if I chose to vote again I would be able to do so. They are for different voting locations (same town) so i would not be recognised if I did vote twice. It got me thinking how common this actually is and does anybody take advantage of it and vote twice.....or maybe even more?

takun

Ditto here, and I haven't lived in the old house for about 10 years. Never voted twice though.

I remember living in a ground floor flat in Rathmines years ago, while there was an election on. A positive flood of voting cards arrived, almost none for anyone who actually lived there at the time. They were all piled up on a shelf near the door.

Being on the ground floor, we pretty much always ended up opening the door to canvassers. More than one lot gazed at the pile with interest and asked about them, but only one offered 'I could take those away for you and get it sorted out'.

Yeah, right.

Colm R

Whats suppose to happen is:

- When you fill out the form to register at a new addres, you are suppose to enter details of where you are registered previously.

- Then, for a period of time, you will be registered in two places. this is common in the run to an election.

- then once, you have been put on the list for your new location, the local authority is suppose to contact the local authority of where you use to live and request you be removed. Obviously in your case, its the same local authority, but the principal is the same.

When I moved from Cork to Dublin, I registered shortly before the election in 2007. Dublin City council added me to the list and I voted. I also received a polling card in Cork. However, after the election, Cork County council received notification from Dublin to remove me from their list.

What should then happen is Cork should then check to see if I did vote, and if I did, I could get in trouble.

Of course this system entirely breaks down when the voter forgets to say if they were registered before, or if the once council fails to notify another, or if the same council fails to notify itself that Joe Soap has moved house. If this happens, you will simply stay on the register until you are randomly contacted in November if each year to confirm where you live. This is unlikely as most people are never contacted, but there is apparently random checks. Even if they find you are registered in more than one place through no fault of your own, they can still check if you voted twice on the same day. If so, again, you get in trouble.


Which then brings us on nicely to election reform. Personally I think that its badly needed. If you think that every legal resident in the state, wether they are entitled to vote or not, has a PPS number. Some organs of the state use this number. Some don't.

I think every interaction between the resident and the government (local or national) should require the use of the PPS number. Everything from Health, to tax, to driviers license, to electoral registrar.

Then when you move house, you pop in to the local civic office, fill out the form and say I live here. Or go online, (similar to Revenues ROS system) and update your details.

Anyway, thats my 2cents.

Sir Oxman

Colm R wrote: »

I think every interaction between the resident and the government (local or national) should require the use of the PPS number. Everything from Health, to tax, to driviers license, to electoral registrar.

Totally agree on electoral register.
The current situation is wide open to abuse.

Are there any drawbacks to using PPS?

Colm R

gambiaman wrote: »

Are there any drawbacks to using PPS?

No if implemented correctly.

Yes if implemented incorrectly.


There are issues of nanny state here. Possibly it infringes on your rights to live in the country without the state knowing where you are.

But then again, the state needs to know where you live to send you your tax cert, or social welfare payments. So the point is mute.

I just wish there was a single online point of contact with online banking type security, and a parallel off line method. So instead of motortax.ie, you would go to something like ireland.gov.ie.

There, you would have everything you need to do, and with webcontent being so dynamic these days, once you log in, you would only be presented with the information relevant to you.

So if you own car, you click on the 'My Car' section. If you didn't, the 'My Car' section would not be there.

You could also enter your new Postal address (with zip code) and it would add you to registrar, and remove you from another.

You could browse your history tax certs, P60s, social welfare history.

All that ROS does, should be there as well. But thats in a perfect world.