How many times did you vote?

Jesus Wept

By Damian Corless

Q: The State's register of electors was this week described as A: Chaotic? B: A shambles? C: A farce? A disgrace? E: All of the above?

The correct answer is E: All of the above. A more detailed multiple choice would also include the options 'incomplete', 'out of date', 'a joke', 'unacceptable' and 'an open invitation to electoral fraud'.

The Labour Party claims that the register might be off the mark by 800,000 people, leading to massive distortions in constituency boundaries and election results. Environment Minister Dick Roche guesstimates that the register is out by only 300,000, making the massive distortions less massive.

Last week Labour's Eamon Gilmore said: "Virtually everyone involved in politics can recount the experience of canvassing in housing estates or blocks of flats where the names on the register bear little relationship to those actually living in these houses or apartments."

This week Taoiseach Bertie Ahern broached this long-time open secret of the political inside track. He told the Dail: "While the campaign to get people on the register is very active, the problem is that people never come off it. I have seen houses in my constituency where 80 people are supposedly living. That is very difficult since these houses are supposed to have only four or five bedrooms. There was an extraordinary voter turn-out in some of those houses in the last general election."

Bertie's dig was one of several directed at Sinn Fein as the House debated electoral fraud. The sudden rush to mend the gaping holes in the register is a belated reaction to the growing electoral threat posed by SF in the South, especially to Fianna Fail. In the mid-week, officials from Dick Roche's department met with local authorities to plan a door-to-door blitz of the country over the coming months which will result in a much improved draft electoral register to be published in November.

Opposition parties and number crunchers have criticised the planned blitz as akin to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. The Government has defended it as a short-term solution to a long-term problem. But how did such a key mechanism of the democratic process get to be in such a shambolic state of affairs if everyone in politics has known about it being so bad for so long?

Mary Harney hinted at the answer when she recalled that when she first entered politics, each local party branch took pains to see that the register was kept up to date. What she didn't say was that the parties did this updating in a strictly partisan way, being only interested in keeping likely supporters on the live register.

In the game of political football played since the foundation of the State, the electoral register has been widely regarded not so much as part of the rule book, but as something to be kicked around. In tandem, personation at the polling booth in Ireland equated with Maradona's Hand of God goal in Argentina, with many reasoning that if you've the bottle to chance your arm, and you get away with it, fair dues.

Early Free State electioneering was not for the faint-hearted. After the 1927 campaign, a Fianna Fail TD complained in the Dail that the police in Kerry had torn down his party's posters, commandeered FF election cars, roughed up FF election workers and confiscated electoral registers from FF personation officers.

In 1932, FF began a 16-year stint in power, and soon was the target of routine denunciations that it was soft on personation. The party of law and order, Fine Gael, fired off questions in the Dail demanding to know why prosecutions for electoral fraud plummeted after it lost office. One FG deputy asked the Justice Minister rhetorically: "Is it due to the fact that his party is kept in office by reason of this abominable practice?"

Fine Gael repeatedly attacked Fianna Fail for interfering with the judicial process, with the Minister for Justice exercising a 'prerogative of mercy' to have court sentences reduced or quashed. The response was sometimes one of open contempt. In 1934 Fine Gael tabled a question asking how many times the Minister had exercised the prerogative in the preceding period. Five times, said the Minister. The Fine Gael deputy pressed him. Was that all?

"Oh no," said the Minister. "There were some before that."

By 1960 electoral fraud had become the elephant in the room of Irish politics. As Independent Deputy Frank Sherwin complained to the Justice Minister that year: "There are at least 25,000 voters personated at every election and the Garda do not act. How many persons were imprisoned for personation in the last general election? None. It's treated as a joke."

The Minister jokingly replied: "Judging by what the Deputy says, some members of this House must have got in that way."

Sherwin thundered on: "All the parties treat it as a joke, that is why the Act is broken in 1,001 ways and no-one is ever charged. The parties behave like gangsters in Chicago. They look upon it as their business, not the guards' business."

When the guards have made it their business, the public has paid attention. During one election, it was reported: "Crowds lined the Ballhooly Road in Cork to watch an exciting chase by a Civic Guard Sergeant in a commandeered car, after a man suspected of personation. Around 8pm the man presented himself at the booth and asked for a voting paper. The vote in that name had already been cast.

"Sgt Sexton and Guard Finn requested him to accompany them to an address which he gave. The man agreed but when the party had gone a short distance he suddenly broke away and ran towards the centre of the city. The guards gave chase through the crowds. Sergeant Sexton stopped a passing motorist, commandeered the car, and drove after the man who took cover in Labour Party headquarters."

But not even that car chase was as dramatic as the events of February 18, 1982 when Charles Haughey's election agent, Pat O'Connor, was sensationally charged with attempting to vote at two polling stations in the tight Dublin North constituency. By lunchtime on polling day, the damaging news was splashed across the front of the Evening Herald. Mysterious buyers mobilised, snapping up every copy in bulk from Dublin North shops.

Just as RTE's six o'clock news went on air, the constituency suffered a widespread power blackout. Locals said that someone had thrown a bicycle onto an ESB transformer. A judge later cleared O'Connor (who became known as Pat O'Connor Pat O'Connor), on the grounds that a secret ballot makes it impossible to tell if someone marks a second paper.

Now, having had nine years to tackle the perversion of personation, the government is in a tizzy to get over the message that it hasn't gone away, you know.

Source

So how many times did you vote?

Micilin Muc

The-Rigger wrote: »

Source

So how many times did you vote?

Apt username.

Morrisseeee

13 times. :eek::p
No's 1,2,3 to FG, 12 & 13 to FF, and the rest was eenie-meenie-miney-mo :pac:

phasers

Once.

My Dog on the other hand is a corrupt little bastard, think he must have voted about five times

galwayrush

9, nothing to the IMF inviting corrupt ones or their green lap dogs.

Mike 1972

Story in the Irish Times about a seven year old who has been recieving polling cards since he was three.

Im all in favour for reducing the voting age but come on........:pac:

But in all seriousness the disgraceful state of the electoral register is an an issue which doesnt receive anything like the attention it merits and until it is Ireland will never have legitimate government.

ilovesleep

Mike 1972 wrote: »

Story in the Irish Times about a seven year old who has been recieving polling cards since he was three.

Im all in favour for reducing the voting age but come on........:pac:

But in all seriousness the disgraceful state of the electoral register is an an issue which doesnt receive anything like the attention it merits and until it is Ireland will never have legitimate government.

He would probably have more cop on then a lot of the irish electorate.

Mint Sauce

Just the once, 1-10 on a 13 candidate slip.

Dunjohn

I've a sister who went into a polling station last night only to find that somebody else had already voted under her name.

Just to rub it in, she'd received polling cards at both her own house and the parents' so she could have voted twice.

Collie D

phasers wrote: »

Once.

My Dog on the other hand is a corrupt little bastard, think he must have voted about five times

I'm sorry. I liked that so much I had to steal it and text it to few friends.

Dunjohn wrote: »

I've a sister who went into a polling station last night only to find that somebody else had already voted under her name.

Just to rub it in, she'd received polling cards at both her own house and the parents' so she could have voted twice.

So what happened? She didn't get to vote I assume?

El Weirdo

Once.

My brother received his polling card but when he got to the booth they informed him that he wasn't on the list and wouldn't let him vote.

BroomBurner

Once, but noone asked for my ID

CrazyRabbit

NAMA took my vote. They sold it to recoup some of my debts.

Dunjohn

Collie D wrote: »

So what happened? She didn't get to vote I assume?

She did vote, one of the guys at the table said she shouldn't be able to but the other said they couldn't deny her. She had i.d. and her card with her so she was clearly who she said she was.

Berty

BroomBurner wrote: »

Once, but noone asked for my ID

Most don't. I live in a small town(where people still don't know each other) and just gave our names and were given the voting slip.

Didn't bring the polling card or any ID.

Votes are meaningless anyway because if your candidate loses out your vote gets transferred even if you don't want your vote going to somebody else. Farce really.

upandcumming

The article is from 2006.
COME ON!

PeterIanStaker

Didn't vote for terrorism or financial terrorism.

littlehedgehog

'if your candidate loses out your vote gets transferred even if you don't want your vote going to somebody else'...
Not if you only gave preferences to the people you wanted to see elected?

Anyway, voted once, but could've voted twice