Voting Liberally.

kneemos

Apparently there's half a million too many on the register . Anybody admit to voting more than once?Or is it a bit of a myth?
No idea what the penalty is or if anybody has ever been caught.

saltsun

Vote early, vote often.

Fred Swanson

This post has been deleted.

DEFTLEFTHAND

Do people use their dead relatives votes?

Sunnyisland

Never seen or heard it being done here, Dublin central.

Sunnyisland

kneemos wrote: »

Apparently there's half a million too many on the register . Anybody admit to voting more than once?Or is it a bit of a myth?
No idea what the penalty is or if anybody has ever been caught.

Where you get that figure from ? N Korea :-)

kneemos

realies wrote: »

Where you get that figure from ? N Korea :-)

https://www.google.ie/url?q=http://www.kildarenow.com/news/irelands-electoral-register-has-overstated-half-a-million-people/70249&sa=U&ved=0ahUKEwja6NKOkofLAhUKcj4KHe9pC0IQFggbMAA&usg=AFQjCNGPwVcHDqbKQ82gGcmRETVh_Z92wA

Sunnyisland

kneemos wrote: »

https://www.google.ie/url?q=http://www.kildarenow.com/news/irelands-electoral-register-has-overstated-half-a-million-people/70249&sa=U&ved=0ahUKEwja6NKOkofLAhUKcj4KHe9pC0IQFggbMAA&usg=AFQjCNGPwVcHDqbKQ82gGcmRETVh_Z92wA

That's the shinners in government so lol lol

The_Valeyard

Was it Charles Haugheys buddy that was caught voting twice?

freshpopcorn

I never got the big thing about having to go registering to vote. I was automatically put on the register and when my grandmother died she was taken off it before the next referendum taking place.

kneemos

freshpopcorn wrote: »

I never got the big thing about having to go registering to vote. I was automatically put on the register and when my grandmother died she was taken off it before the next referendum taking place.

Someone must have registered you.

KingBrian2

There was fix up with the electronic voting machines. They were designed to make it easy to cheat apparently they could alter your vote. Glad they stuck to the common pencil and paper.

Know of a certain politician in Kerry who asked a friend of mine to impersonate another voter, she refused but there was a bit of pressure applied. Kerry has had a few accusations about electoral fraud and a file was supposed to be sent to the DPP after the last election but unsurprisingly it seems to have gathered dust.

freshpopcorn

freshpopcorn wrote: »

I never got the big thing about having to go registering to vote. I was automatically put on the register and when my grandmother died she was taken off it before the next referendum taking place.

You evidently have a good registrar of electors in the area, keeping tabs in everything, the postmen used to be great sources for them. As long as s/he made sure you resided there before adding you, and were not away working.

kneemos

[Deleted User] wrote: »

You evidently have a good registrar of electors in the area, keeping tabs in everything, the postmen used to be great sources for them. As long as s/he made sure you resided there before adding you, and were not away working.

They need to embrace technology. Everyone has a pps number,shouldn't be a massive difficulty to keep account of ages and deaths and amend the register automatically.

Fat Christy

I made a mistake the first time!

kneemos

kneemos wrote: »

They need to embrace technology. Everyone has a pps number,shouldn't be a massive difficulty to keep account of ages and deaths and amend the register automatically.

Gives no info on whereabouts, which is the critical thing...

Ice Maiden

Why not let dead pets vote?

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

There are many people on the register and long gone from their addresses. 3 additional voting cards arrived here this week for kids long married and living elsewhere - where they are alsonregistered to vote. There has to be hundreds of thousands incorrectly listed on the register. We notified them of the changes here several times and it's still wrong.

Capt'n Midnight

The_Valeyard wrote: »

Was it Charles Haugheys buddy that was caught voting twice?

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/personation-once-again-26383114.html

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.

lazybones32

We get sent polling cards for people who do not exist: one of the names that is sent to us is the same as a former pet. deceased family members still get sent their card, as do people who no longer reside here but have registered in their new location.

Fleawuss

kneemos wrote: »

They need to embrace technology. Everyone has a pps number,shouldn't be a massive difficulty to keep account of ages and deaths and amend the register automatically.

HSE still write to my dead mother. Bit of a fixation I think.

KomradeBishop

Good thread - got me skeptical and wondering about ways that the voting system can be cheated. Noticed this while reading up on related things - cross-posted from another thread:

Something important to note about the coming elections: Irish citizens abroad - i.e. our huge number of emigrants - do not have a vote.

We have been waiting for a promised Electoral Commission (which we're supposed to wait on, for allowing overseas votes) from two separate governments now - and fixing this was a promise Fine Gael made, but what is taking so long?

Almost a decade we have been waiting for this, and it seems like it has been conveniently delayed again and again, and this time until after the general election, almost as if the purpose were so that Fine Gael would not have to deal with the protest votes from emigrants - who obviously would have most reason to vote against Fine Gael (for example...).

To me, this seems almost perfectly deferred/orchestrated, in order to disenfranchise emigrants, and to erode the voting power of groups who would oppose government.


Remember, when it comes to Irish emigrants:

Ireland has the highest percentage of people living abroad out of all OECD countries. One out of every six Irish-born people currently resides in another country, illustrating the devastating and enduring impact the global financial crisis has had on the country.

https://d28wbuch0jlv7v.cloudfront.net/images/infografik/normal/chartoftheday_4237_the_countries_with_the_most_people_living_overseas_n.jpg
https://www.statista.com/chart/4237/the-countries-with-the-most-people-living-overseas/

KomradeBishop

lazybones32 wrote: »

We get sent polling cards for people who do not exist: one of the names that is sent to us is the same as a former pet. deceased family members still get sent their card, as do people who no longer reside here but have registered in their new location.

Seriously? That's utterly crazy if true, so a bit skeptical - if true, that could probably get in the newspapers if proof can be shown.

uch

KingBrian2 wrote: »

There was fix up with the electronic voting machines. They were designed to make it easy to cheat apparently they could alter your vote. Glad they stuck to the common pencil and paper.

Bull****

uch

The only thing they don't know is about deceased people, I had to sort out a database for a well known Gay senator and all I was asked was to try remove the dead people to avoid embarrassment

KingBrian2

uch wrote: »

Bull****

Come off it electronic voting can't beat the traditional ballot.

The_Valeyard

KomradeBishop wrote: »

Good thread - got me skeptical and wondering about ways that the voting system can be cheated. Noticed this while reading up on related things - cross-posted from another thread:

Something important to note about the coming elections: Irish citizens abroad - i.e. our huge number of emigrants - do not have a vote.

We have been waiting for a promised Electoral Commission (which we're supposed to wait on, for allowing overseas votes) from two separate governments now - and fixing this was a promise Fine Gael made, but what is taking so long?

Almost a decade we have been waiting for this, and it seems like it has been conveniently delayed again and again, and this time until after the general election, almost as if the purpose were so that Fine Gael would not have to deal with the protest votes from emigrants - who obviously would have most reason to vote against Fine Gael (for example...).

To me, this seems almost perfectly deferred/orchestrated, in order to disenfranchise emigrants, and to erode the voting power of groups who would oppose government.


Remember, when it comes to Irish emigrants:

Ireland has the highest percentage of people living abroad out of all OECD countries. One out of every six Irish-born people currently resides in another country, illustrating the devastating and enduring impact the global financial crisis has had on the country.

https://d28wbuch0jlv7v.cloudfront.net/images/infografik/normal/chartoftheday_4237_the_countries_with_the_most_people_living_overseas_n.jpg
https://www.statista.com/chart/4237/the-countries-with-the-most-people-living-overseas/

Against this proposal.

If they have left the country and are working and paying taxes abroad, they should not have the right to vote in a general election. Their interests are represented in the countries they have settled in.

CrabRevolution

I totally disagree with giving emigrants the vote. They're not here, they're not the ones being governed or having to live with the results of the election.

The purpose of the election is to elect a government to govern you. If you're not here, you aren't being governed, so shouldn't have a say in who gets to govern the rest of us in Ireland.

If anything, the huge number of them abroad is a reason not to bring in foreign voting. A system where 1 in 6 voters can elect anyone they want knowing they never have to deal with the consequences is ridiculous. One in six is also probably being conservative, since the right would probably involve citizenship, so many thousands more abroad with Irish citizenship could potentially vote, hugely skewing an election.

At most I'd allow something like the french system, where foreign voters elect a few TDs representing vast overseas constituencies.

KingBrian2

Fat Christy wrote: »

I made a mistake the first time!

No redoes.

lazybones32

KomradeBishop wrote: »

Seriously? That's utterly crazy if true, so a bit skeptical - if true, that could probably get in the newspapers if proof can be shown.

Oh, it's true. The card comes with the first name of our dog (dog had human name, not a 'Fido', etc) and our surname.
We could not prove that the now-dead-dog had the name he had, since his license doesn't require a name, only breed. But the polling card arrived with the others: 7 votes for 6 people; 2 of those people live in a different Const. and 1 is deceased

stefanovich

This crap really gets to me. At the very least make it mandatory to present photo id when placing your vote!

matrim

I found out last year that I'm registered to vote twice. One at my parents house that someone did for me and one in Dublin that I registered for myself. I haven't used the one at my parents and keep forgetting to get it removed

Arbiter of Good Taste

stefanovich wrote: »

This crap really gets to me. At the very least make it mandatory to present photo id when placing your vote!

Whilst that would seem reasonable, I would put money on it that you would have more than a few of the usual suspects bleating that this would disenfranchise the most "vulnerable" in society.

stefanovich

Arbiter of Good Taste wrote: »

Whilst that would seem reasonable, I would put money on it that you would have more than a few of the usual suspects bleating that this would disenfranchise the most "vulnerable" in society.

Ah, because they can't afford a passport? I'm sure they have no trouble finding photo ID when trying to buy their 8 cans of Carling.

EuropeanSon

I'm registered to vote three times (parents' house, college place, and place I lived last year), and I'm not sure if I'll bother using any of them.

kneemos

Is it the Americans that have to re-register for every election?
If it was made simple via text or email it could be a runner.

stefanovich

EuropeanSon wrote: »

I'm registered to vote three times (parents' house, college place, and place I lived last year), and I'm not sure if I'll bother using any of them.

Why, do you feel disenfranchised?

Balmed Out

A lot of people who move and re register don't bother removing themselves from the old one and often if they do the bureaucracy doesn't bother removing them.

KomradeBishop

The_Valeyard wrote: »

Against this proposal.

If they have left the country and are working and paying taxes abroad, they should not have the right to vote in a general election. Their interests are represented in the countries they have settled in.

Giving that you want citizens to remain stripped of their rights i.e. disenfranchised, you have to justify your position. Ireland is actually an outlier internationally, when it comes to this - most countries do afford a vote in such circumstances:

Ireland is out of step with the majority of democratic countries in disenfranchising citizens once they move abroad, the Votes for Irish Citizens Abroad (VICA) campaign said on Wednesday.

The comment came ahead of a Dáil debate on Friday on a report by the Joint Oireachtas Committee on European Union Affairs, published last November, that recommended Irish emigrants be granted the right to vote.

This followed criticism from the European Commission, which said Ireland was disenfranchising its citizens living in other EU member states by not providing them with voting rights.

More than 120 countries have provisions for their citizens abroad to cast a ballot, but Ireland does not currently allow emigrants to vote in presidential or Dáil elections.

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/ireland-out-of-step-on-voting-rights-for-emigrants-1.2400705

KomradeBishop

CrabRevolution wrote: »

I totally disagree with giving emigrants the vote. They're not here, they're not the ones being governed or having to live with the results of the election.

The purpose of the election is to elect a government to govern you. If you're not here, you aren't being governed, so shouldn't have a say in who gets to govern the rest of us in Ireland.

If anything, the huge number of them abroad is a reason not to bring in foreign voting. A system where 1 in 6 voters can elect anyone they want knowing they never have to deal with the consequences is ridiculous. One in six is also probably being conservative, since the right would probably involve citizenship, so many thousands more abroad with Irish citizenship could potentially vote, hugely skewing an election.

At most I'd allow something like the french system, where foreign voters elect a few TDs representing vast overseas constituencies.

Emigrants have had to deal with the results of our governments actions, more so than most other citizens - through having to leave behind their families/communities/friends, in order to find a living abroad due to having grown up in an ineptly run country.

Many of these emigrants also want to come back in the future as well - though I would support adding a time-limit on how long they've been away, before they can lose the right to vote.

Quite simply, our government should have no right to remove any citizens democratic right to vote like that - and internationally, it is the democratic standard that voters get to keep their rights after going abroad (with many countries having a time limit like above) - it's a simple matter of whether we live in a functioning democracy or not, which affords citizens their proper voting rights.


This is not a question of 'if' either - overseas voters will be given this right (that is the current political consensus) - it is only a question of 'when'; and Fine Gael (along with the previous government) seem likely to have deliberately deferred enacting this into law (for almost a decade now...), in order to deny emigrants their vote (seeing as, for most of them, it would almost certainly go against Fine Gael).

Eugene Norman

EuropeanSon wrote: »

I'm registered to vote three times (parents' house, college place, and place I lived last year), and I'm not sure if I'll bother using any of them.

It's hard for the system to know this is going on. That said most people don't multiple vote, it's just a bureaucratic mix up.

KomradeBishop

matrim wrote: »

I found out last year that I'm registered to vote twice. One at my parents house that someone did for me and one in Dublin that I registered for myself. I haven't used the one at my parents and keep forgetting to get it removed

Are there any safeguards in place for detecting duplicate votes, if someone attempted to take advantage of this?

Is the actual technical ballot process Ireland uses, and its security safeguards, documented somewhere? Had a brief search, but didn't see.

stefanovich

KomradeBishop wrote: »

Are there any safeguards in place for detecting duplicate votes, if someone attempted to take advantage of this?

Is the actual technical ballot process Ireland uses, and its security safeguards, documented somewhere? Had a brief search, but didn't see.

No and no.

kneemos

KomradeBishop wrote: »

Are there any safeguards in place for detecting duplicate votes, if someone attempted to take advantage of this?

Is the actual technical ballot process Ireland uses, and its security safeguards, documented somewhere? Had a brief search, but didn't see.

If you're registered at two different addresses there's no way to safeguard against it.Unless you showed at the same polling station twice and somebody remembered you.

animaal

KomradeBishop wrote: »

Emigrants have had to deal with the results of our governments actions, more so than most other citizens

Yes, but of current/previous governments, not the next one. Hopefully they already had a say in the election of the government that led to their emigration.

KomradeBishop wrote: »

Quite simply, our government should have no right to remove any citizens democratic right to vote like that - and internationally, it is the democratic standard that voters get to keep their rights after going abroad (with many countries having a time limit like above) - it's a simple matter of whether we live in a functioning democracy or not, which affords citizens their proper voting rights.

Would you see any additional responsibilities to go with these rights? E.g. being subject to Irish taxation, in the way US emigrants are subject to US taxation?

padd b1975

The_Valeyard wrote: »

Was it Charles Haugheys buddy that was caught voting twice?

A guy called Pat 'O Connor.

Or as Phoenix magazine called him-Pat 'O Connor Pat 'O Connor.

KomradeBishop

kneemos wrote: »

If you're registered at two different addresses there's no way to safeguard against it.Unless you showed at the same polling station twice and somebody remembered you.

I read that other countries have ballot safeguards, which should prevent stuff like this - so I'm interested in the technical process that Ireland uses (n.b. below is Canada's system, not Ireland):

Oh, and as for the “secret ballot” part of the equation, here’s how it works:

An official hands you a ballot, with the counterfoil portion intact. There is a number on the counterfoil only. They hand the ballot back to you. You mark your vote in private and fold your ballot up the way they told you to. That obscures who it is that you actually voted for. Without unfolding your ballot (leaving your privacy intact), the official takes the ballot back from you and tears off the counterfoil. Now, your ballot is free of any identifying marks, because the only number is on the counterfoil. You (or they) deposit your ballot in the box. the counterfoil is deposited elsewhere. There is now no way to trace which person deposited which ballot.

KATE Steph, Josh is correct. We did not record any connection between the voter and the number on their ballot. We simply recorded on the list that the person had voted by checking them off.

The counterfoils are part of the system that guarantees voting fraud has not taken place. After the doors closed, we had to account for every ballot we received, adding up the used ballots, the unused ones, any ballots damaged and replaced (one, in the course of the whole day). The counterfoils are kept in a separate envelope so that if a recount were needed, it could be verified that the number of counterfoils matches the recorded number of ballots cast.

It’s really a very good system, because everything is solidly witnessed by two people who don’t know each other plus in most cases others as well [but see NOTE below], but great care is taken to make sure nobody knows how any one else voted. In the case of a damaged ballot (one voter managed to tear off the non-counterfoil end of the paper in our instance), the first instruction is for the person to go back behind the booth and mark EVERY candidate with the same mark before we write NUL all over it and give them a new one. So even in the case of this mistake, we didn’t know how the voter initially marked the ballot.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/09/what-voting-can-look-like.html

So this allows recording that a person has voted, but not linking their actual vote to the record of them personally having voted - and you could use this to look up duplicate votes.

So what system does Ireland have? Is it anything like this?

KomradeBishop

animaal wrote: »

Yes, but of current/previous governments, not the next one. Hopefully they already had a say in the election of the government that led to their emigration.



Would you see any additional responsibilities to go with these rights? E.g. being subject to Irish taxation, in the way US emigrants are subject to US taxation?

Irish citizens abroad are already taxed for 3 years, as far as I can see - open to correction there though.

kneemos

KomradeBishop wrote: »

I read that other countries have ballot safeguards, which should prevent stuff like this - so I'm interested in the technical process that Ireland uses (n.b. below is Canada's system, not Ireland):

Oh, and as for the “secret ballot” part of the equation, here’s how it works:

An official hands you a ballot, with the counterfoil portion intact. There is a number on the counterfoil only. They hand the ballot back to you. You mark your vote in private and fold your ballot up the way they told you to. That obscures who it is that you actually voted for. Without unfolding your ballot (leaving your privacy intact), the official takes the ballot back from you and tears off the counterfoil. Now, your ballot is free of any identifying marks, because the only number is on the counterfoil. You (or they) deposit your ballot in the box. the counterfoil is deposited elsewhere. There is now no way to trace which person deposited which ballot.

KATE Steph, Josh is correct. We did not record any connection between the voter and the number on their ballot. We simply recorded on the list that the person had voted by checking them off.

The counterfoils are part of the system that guarantees voting fraud has not taken place. After the doors closed, we had to account for every ballot we received, adding up the used ballots, the unused ones, any ballots damaged and replaced (one, in the course of the whole day). The counterfoils are kept in a separate envelope so that if a recount were needed, it could be verified that the number of counterfoils matches the recorded number of ballots cast.

It’s really a very good system, because everything is solidly witnessed by two people who don’t know each other plus in most cases others as well [but see NOTE below], but great care is taken to make sure nobody knows how any one else voted. In the case of a damaged ballot (one voter managed to tear off the non-counterfoil end of the paper in our instance), the first instruction is for the person to go back behind the booth and mark EVERY candidate with the same mark before we write NUL all over it and give them a new one. So even in the case of this mistake, we didn’t know how the voter initially marked the ballot.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/09/what-voting-can-look-like.html

So this allows recording that a person has voted, but not linking their actual vote to the record of them personally having voted - and you could use this to look up duplicate votes.

So what system does Ireland have? Is it anything like this?

They have your name and address on a register and simply cross it off when you vote.This allows for the same person registered at different addresses to vote more than once.

animaal

KomradeBishop wrote: »

Irish citizens abroad are already taxed for 3 years, as far as I can see - open to correction there though.

I'm not aware of this being the case - in fact, I believe in most cases a refund is given by the Revenue, since the emigrant receives a full year's tax credits for the year in which they leave.