General Irish politics discussion thread

New Zealand has very limited overseas voting. An NZ citizen who lives overseas can vote from abroad if (a) they have lived in New Zealand for at least 12 months at some time in their lives, and (b) they have been in New Zealand within the three years before the election. New Zealand may have 750,000 citizens living abroad, but currently only 63,000 of them are enrolled to vote.

Is something like this what you are proposing for Ireland?

(And for the record: Greek citizens can vote from abroad provided (a) they have previously lived in Greece and were registered to vote there and have maintained their registration, and (b) they now live in another EU member state. At the last election only 3.500 overseas voters were registered; Greece is considering abolishing overseas representation.)

Much depends on the kind of non-resident voting that is introduced.

Most countries that allow non-resident citizens to vote in fact only allow certain non-residents to vote. Typically, they have to be relatively recent emigrants, and they get to vote in the constituencies in which they were previously resident and registered. After a certain period, if they haven't returned, they lose the right to vote. Mostly, for these countries, only a minority of non-resident citizens are eligible to vote; the rest have either been abroad too long, have never lived in the home country, or have never lived there as adults.

Countries which allow all non-resident citizens to vote usually give them segregated, limited representation, unrelated to their numbers. Italy, for example, has eight members of the Chamber of Deputies (out of 630) and four Senators (out of 315) elected by non-resident citizens, grouped into four territorial constituencies — Europe; South America; North/Central America; Everywhere Else. Similarly France has 11 constituencies overseas, each electing one member to the National Assembly (which has 577 members in all). These allocations of overseas seats bear no relationship to the number of citizens living overseas, or to the number living in each seat. That would be constitutionally problematic in Ireland, where the ratio of voters to TDs has to be more or less uniform across all constituencies.

As for how somebody living abroad can be informed about the vote, the candidates, etc — we live in an age where this is more feasible than ever before. As to whether they'd be interested, or whether they would be well-equipped to make a sound and balanced judgment — well, that's a different question.

Ironic that you should ask how non-residents would get a vote in the Senate because, in fact, the Senate is the only place where we do have non-resident voting — if you are otherwise qualified to vote in the university constituencies (i.e. you are a citizen, you are a graduate of the university concerned) you do not need to be resident in Ireland in order to register to vote. Voting is by post.

Not sure what your point is about "getting vote counting sorted first". Vote counting works fine in Ireland. It takes time, but that's just because votes embed a lot of information and a sophisticated set of choices. We could have much quicker vote counts if we give voters much less say in who is to represent them, but I don't think that would be a good trade-off.

I've made that point before and was rounded on because apparently the way we count votes 'is the best!' or something.

The fact that it took almost a week to fully count the votes in the last European elections ain't something to be proud of, but again, Irish exceptionalism...

Something like that won't be too bad, to be honest. At least it something.

What I believe is that

a) We should allow Irish citizens who were resident in Ireland before they moved away a right to vote in elections

b) That right should be timeboxed

The argument then is what that window is..

12 months <--> 20 years

Take your pick.

However, we are not even talking about pragmatic proposals, as there is just a hardline just 'No' reaction anytime this topic is brought up. Im sure someone will bring up the 'tax' argument soon.

It doesn't matter who or why they started the debate here quite simply if you want to change the status quo as you seem to be arguing for its up to you to provide the reasoning why. And like it or not everyone else does it is not enough, everyone else jumped off a cliff so should we do it too?. Especially when you can only give 1 example of a similar situation to ours as Greece being nowhere close to our foreign diaspora vs population ratio does not count.

I think you are proving the point for me in regard to Irish exceptionalism and the innate conservativism we have in this society when it comes to looking at better ways of doing some things in this country.

As to the why?

It's quite simple really.

It's the right thing to do

All other things aside that is why we should do it.

All your arguing for here is change for the sake of change, once again theres no actual reasons backed up by facts and logic for why we should change anything.

I am, it's just it's wasted on you, as you already made up your mind.

No argument from me is going to change it.

But I know one thing. If we do allow it, we won't turn into a pseudo-dictator ala Turkey, which some people were preposterously fearmongering.

Yes I have made up my mind but if someone provides me with good enough reasoning im open to changing it, you continually refuse to even try.

Its self evident.... lol, fair play admitting you've got nothing.

Point to me once in this thread where I specifically claimed Ireland would fall under a dictatorship if we allowed these changes beyond the one post where I referenced and ridiculed your absurdist straw manning logic.

You are still stuck with everyone else does it..... and yes there are criteria for voting I can use the same argument for removing all age requirements for it would you agree with that?

What are they onto exactly? You still are just nibbling around the edges of giving an actual reason?

I never said I was afraid of our democracy falling apart.

Let me try an analogy for you, lets say im born in Dublin and I move to cork for an undetermined amount of time but I may move back to Dublin in the future, I move my registration to Cork and get to vote there for the Local Authority but why shouldnt I still be allowed vote in Dublin for my old Local Authority?

You might argue well its different for people who move abroad as they don't get a vote in their new country but surely that's simply the price they pay for moving abroad? If they want to vote there they can go through the process to gain that right much like registering in a new constituency in Ireland. Or they can falsely retain their voting right and fly back to Ireland or in the analogy drive back from cork to dublin each election.

There's a lot of spinning going on here. Most election counts are completed on the first day of counting. The vast majority of counts are completed by the second day. In unusual circumstances, where there are very tight margins between candidates, vote counting may continue beyond a second day, sometimes for a few days more - but that is fairly unusual and exceptional.

The most important point though about extended counts is - so what? So what if it takes a few days to count? What problem does this cause?

Quite a lot of this is just factually wrong. We do have postal voting, for people with disabilities, for people who are in education away from their polling station, for people who are away on business at the time;

Postal voting was extended in the DBS bye election for Covid reasons.

Our electoral system is very solid, and yes, the 'anoraks' who get to physically see each vote as it comes out of box play a very significant role in making sure this continues into the future. You're welcome.

And this is exactly how we ended up spending €60-€70 million on an eVoting system that had no business case - no actual purpose, no objectives to improve anything - just change for the sake of change. Be careful what you wish for.

Using extremes to prove a point is foolish and not worth the bytes it's written on.

In fact it doesn't prove anything at all, apart from how some people have odd interpretations of reality.

Jesus its like you only read half the posts. And you still haven't given any reason bar others do it and "its the right thing".