Local/ EU elections who will you Vote for

If you are in a 4/5/6 seater then 4/5/6 people are going to be elected. So by only voting for 2 candidates you are leaving it up to everyone else to decide who is elected.

Personally I'd recommend that you do at least 4/5/6 votes based on the amount of seats, if necessary voting for your 'least worst' option at each step if you don't have anyone left you feel positive about. That way you theoretically have some say in every seat allocated. Entirely up to you obviously, and at another level I'm not bothered as by definition you increase the power of my lower preferences by not doing any yourself.

Well Donald,

That's an interesting (and not doubt time consuming) piece of work to by the Dublin Enquirer to be fair to them to get responses from every running candidate on a range of topics.

Not really helping the notion that SF candidates won't open their mouths until head office tell them what to say there folks 🙄

Now, this is the kind of refreshing honesty I can get behind 😁

This. It is probably unlikely that your 20th or 21st preference will become effective, but stranger things have happened. If your first prefernce goes to a candidate who stays in the race a long time but is eliminated on (say) the 10th count, your vote will be transferred to your "next effective preference". After 10 counts, a lot of the people to whom you gave your 2nd, 3rd, 4th etc preference will already have been eliminated or elected, and your vote will transfer to the next candidate to whom you have assigned a preference who is still in the race. That could be quite a low preference but, if a low preference becomes effective, it's just as effective as your first preference would have been.

Conside this hypothetical: there's one seat left to be filled, and it's going to be filled by either the grandstander or the fantasist. Do you have any preference at all about which of them should fill it, or are you genuinely completely indifferent as between these two possiblities? If you have even a mild preference for one of them over the other, give that one a higher preference.

1. The Irish political parties (like parties in other member states) are part of political groupings in the Parliament. E.g. Fine Gael are part of the European Peoples Party (Christian Democrats). While the European political parties don't form a government, their respective strengths in the Parliament do influence the makeup of the Commission and the allocation of the Commission portfolios, and of course it also determines the allocation of parliamentary positions, chairpersons of committees, etc.
2. There are constituencies in the EU elections for the same reason that there are constituencies in national elections; to make the voter's choice manageable. It's bad enough to face an EU ballot paper with maybe 25 names on it; do you really want to have to face a ballot paper with 75 names on it? Plus, electing candidates based on geographic constituences fosters a connection between voters and their representatives.

You can be sure that local people in communities who have experienced the so called Dept of Integration might beg to differ. What use are local councillors if they have no say in what happens locally.

These elections will be used by the public to give the incumbents an almighty kick up the arse and may well bring them crashing down.

As to OP, I'll vote for any sane candidate not aligned with above shennanigans

With regret I will not be voting for a local candidate who has helped me in the past, on principle alone I can't bring myself to vote FG this term.

It the local reps who are members of any of the established parties (fg,ff, greens, sinn fein, SDs, pbp) really gave a crap about immigration crisis, tourism, or anything else affecting communities they would have already resigned from those parties.

Don't ever be fooled by fookers speaking with forked tongues telling the locals one thing, but still supporting the hierarchy in charge of this calamity.

I notice some are trying to play this as if local councillors who are members of the parties in government or in opposition have absolutely nothing to do with the state of things.

They may not be able to vote in the Dail, but they are giving their complete support to the people that do by simply continuing their membership of the parties and running for election for those parties.

If you do not agree with what parties are doing in the dail then how can you vote for any of their members.

It is the same party, the councillors (and MEPs) have the same leader as the TDs that troop into the dail to back their leaders in votes.

If we want change in Ireland you will not get it by voting in the same old parties.

If you want the parties in the Dail to really listen to you now, you will not get them to listen if you back their MEP and council candidates.

They will continue to p**s all over you as your vote is taken for granted.

Just for the sake of completion it's up to the individual countries to decide how many constituences they want to have. Most countries only have a single national constituency. The countries that don't are:

• Belgium (3)
• Ireland (3)
• Italy (5)
• Poland (13)
• Germany has a mix of a national constituency and 16 state level constituencies

The countries that vote on a national basis mostly use a list system.

Correct. Likewise the European elections shouldn't really be used as a protest vote (as someone recommended earlier).

That's how we ended up electing people like Dana, Kathy Sinnott and Mick Wallace to Europe.

I'll be voting based on

A) Hard work they do representing the community

B) The party they represent

I normally wouldn't vote for centre right parties. This time I will vote the entire ballot strategically in a way that might potentially block racist far right candidates. The way I see it there are at present 2 racist far right candidates who will be on my Local ballot, and 6 maybe 7 on my European ballot.

EU: Whether the candidate supported Putin and didnt represent the people of Ireland and EU

Local: Whether my road be paved this century instead of filling potholes that develop in potholes

I will be voting for Independent Ireland candidates in local, European, and General Elections - unless something changes! I'm in MNW so Ciaran Mullooly will be getting my first preference vote in the European Parliament elections.

My main issues are

1, European Union directives/regulation over-reach and our member states additional red tape burdens.

2, Disability/health services.

3, Cost of living.

People complain about fragmentation of politics but this doesn't occur for no reason. I would agree with Michael Fitzmaurice assessment that like them or not, the green party have had candidates elected, are holding the balance of power, and getting their policies enacted.

I don't like the green party, which doesn't make me either right wing or anti environment (wait for it 🙄). I dislike their support of policies such as the Nature Restoration Law, which has a fluffy title but is about controlling the land I own the deeds to. And to pre-answer the accusation, keep your money.

I was responding to a post saying something along the lines of "local elections are important so don't make a protest vote - save that for the Euro election".

People can vote for whomever they want but I think it's a bit weird people voting for candidates for Europe that they wouldn't dream of voting for on a local basis.