Voting Liberally.

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.

Donutz

Im registered to vote twice. Moved house and never got taken off the old address. Also had a third vote in my family home but was removed off that register before the last referendum. I only ever used one vote. Not necessarily because of morals but more the fact I'm too lazy to drive the 5 minutes up the road to vote a second time.

KomradeBishop

kneemos wrote: »

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.

Isn't all of this cross-checked though? Does it not become public record later as well, so that all anyone has to do to find issues, is a simple database search looking for duplicate names?

KomradeBishop

animaal wrote: »

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.

If you're abroad temporarily, you lose your vote, but are still hit with the full whack of taxes:
http://www.revenue.ie/en/tax/it/leaflets/res1.html#section2

If you're abroad permanently, you lose your vote, but you don't get hit with the full tax load - but for 3 years you do still have to pay taxes on certain income:
http://www.revenue.ie/en/tax/it/leaflets/res1.html#section3

I would agree with removing peoples right to vote after a time period - I don't know if I'd agree with 3 years though - but they should definitely have the right to vote; especially those who are only temporarily abroad.

kneemos

KomradeBishop wrote: »

Isn't all of this cross-checked though? Does it not become public record later as well, so that all anyone has to do to find issues, is a simple database search looking for duplicate names?

No.You can have the same name at a different address though,who's to know.

What happens to the list of those who have voted is an interesting question.

Eugene Norman

KomradeBishop wrote: »

If you're abroad temporarily, you lose your vote, but are still hit with the full whack of taxes:
http://www.revenue.ie/en/tax/it/leaflets/res1.html#section2

If you're abroad permanently, you lose your vote, but you don't get hit with the full tax load - but for 3 years you do still have to pay taxes on certain income:
http://www.revenue.ie/en/tax/it/leaflets/res1.html#section3

I would agree with removing peoples right to vote after a time period - I don't know if I'd agree with 3 years though - but they should definitely have the right to vote; especially those who are only temporarily abroad.

That's temporarily. But if someone were to up sticks to London tomorrow he would declare tax status there and get a refund here.

Eugene Norman

kneemos wrote: »

No.You can have the same name at a different address though,who's to know.

What happens to the list of those who have voted is an interesting question.

Obvious solution is to use a pps number.

Mint Sauce

OP, Unless your multiple votes were at different address it could be quite tricky, but in all cases, its electerial fruad to attempt to vote more than once.

We once had 6 votes at my home address for house hold of three. Voting centre, was in a small classroom, with two booths. Unless the polling clerks, or the on duty guard, were not carrying out their duties, you were not going to get away with voting in the morning, and say come back later in the day using another polling card.

My last centre, was in a large hall, with four or five booths, and a Guard present all day. There the up to 10 clerks (2 on each desk) would be assisting each other, observing the whole hall incase someone came in twice, say with a different address at a different booth.

Current centre, I stil get lost in. Multiple booths, spread across 3 to 4 rooms.

stefanovich

Again the wife said her Italian workmate says she is voting, just as she voted in the gay marriage thing. I told her to tell the girl she is breaking the law.

Ted_YNWA

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

Same here, (replacing Dublin with Wexford) but when I requested to be removed from home address, they added me again !!