European Parliament Elections 2024 - Friday, June 7th

Learn that developing secure software and buying expensive scanners that will be used once or twice every five years (unless they become obsolete more rapidly) is "progress"?

Not for a very long time, hopefully.

I'm not comparing to any particular devices. I'm pointing out the flaws with the particular devices that others have been suggesting.

I

But again, for the umpteenth time, can anyone point to any particular devices that will scan 76cm long ballot papers from a stacked pile, to a stacked tray?

I'm not so sure - hundreds of thousands of papers, each taking maybe a minute each. And how many of them will the scanner read, and how many will need human intervention.

I'd really like to see a clear business case on any such proposal.

I strongly suspect that NO aspect of the current count rules were ignored, given the huge scrutiny from participants on all sides, including experts in election law from the main parties.

@AndrewJRenko

Why post this picture in post?

https://www.essvote.com/products/ds950/

I give you the point that format and types of ballots used may need to change to suit the devices used?

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/controversial-dail-printer-project-cost-1-8m-report-finds-1.4097948

Probably cost more than the childrens hospital based on the governments track record

Wouldn't take a rocket scientist to figure out how you wouldn't need that sort of resource. Sure without giving it thought i could think of a solution.

The scumbag isnt worth reporting on.

Einstein? Seriously,how old are you…..

One quick thought would be all voters required to enter PPI(S) number , system identifies voter, couple of confirmations, instructions, on completion of voting you stupify it so much that even Mags who has never had a smart phone in her life can finish the task…..NEXT, and so on

You'll find problems, i'll find solutions.

If the TV Debates didn't influence voters, than Social Media Ads may have had an effect?

Revealed: How much political parties and politicians spent on social media ads ahead of elections

• 
  Top individual social media spenders were Nina Carberry (FG) ~ €20,102, Cynthia Ní Mhurchú (FF) ~ €18,656 and Chris MacManus (SF) ~ €18,008. Regina Doherty ~ €17,185, Labour’s Aodhán Ó Ríordáin ~ €16,024.
• Roblox, TikTok trends and Father Ted: How did social media help candidates on the campaign trail?
• FG made a series of online gaffes in the run-up to polling day. This flew in the face of the image of a party led by the “TikTok Taoiseach”. ~ #TheTikTokseach
  

I am probably proven wrong when I typed this earlier in thread?

Sobeware of FaceBook contentaround the EU Elections, not that anyone is using that for political views I hope.

Also reports of increase in Online Media use over TV convergence for news. ~ Link

Also good to see the Irish Media reports on the EU Meetings happening today?

So you're proposing voting machines?

Because we want results in two days instead of five or six days?

There's no sensible business case to justify this, just as there was no business case for spaffing away €60 million, twenty years ago.

Why would we spend huge money and introduce huge risk into a stable process?

You've really no clue, have you?

For a start, every voter doesn't have a PPS number, so now you're blocking Mags for exercising her democratic right. And all her mates who forgot to bring their PPS number with them, or misremembered it.

But even if we ignore that fundamental issue, your genius idea now requires that every voting machine sitting in every school hall has access to the personal details of all voters in the area, including PPS numbers.

So that means that either :

• every voting machine has to be preloaded with the details for the area (and not the area next door), or
• every voting machine now needs some kind of wireless network connection to a central database.

The Russians and Chinese are having wet dreams at either prospect, which have huge security risks, huge cost implications, huge logistics implications.

What happens when Mags doesn't finish the task btw?

I haven’t a clue? 😂

FFS, take a look in the mirror.

What I was suggesting was back of a fag pack idea

Do you think I spent some time doing a detailed analysis 😂

You remind me of a disgruntled longtime grade 3 public servant

Away with you

Couple of issues with this:

The first is that I see no reason to expect a no-hoper who is undeterred by the likelihood of being eliminated at an early stage will be deterred by the knowledge that that early stage will be "after the completion of the first count". He's likely to be in this for the campaign, not the count.

The second is an objection in principle; equal weight should be attached to all votes. This is not just a fundamental principle of the PR-STV system but it's also a constitutional requirement. Elimninating a candidate at a time when it is still possible for him to garner sufficient votes to be elected offends against that principle. He is being arbitrarily excluded and this devalues the votes of those who have given him their first preference, relative to the votes of those who gave their first preference to candidates not excluded by this arbitrary rule. It also means that people who have given second, etc, preference to the arbitrarily eliminated candidates have those arbitrarily arbitrarily disregarded. If we're doing this just to make the count shorter, we're essentially saying that we haven't got time to give effect to voters' preferences. That's not a good thing for any supposed-to-be-democratic electoral system to say.

But the third issue is that it doesn't seem to be necessary. Whether the candidates are eliminated one at a time or all together, all of the ballot papers of eliminated candidates have to be reexamined. There's nothing to stop electoral officials pre-examining the ballots of candidates who are likely to be eliminated in the next couple of counts and pre-sorting them according to the next effective preference. There's nothing to stop this from being done at the moment; it's just not the practice to do it. It would greatle speed up the completion of the succeeding counts, and it doesn't require arbitarily eliminating candidates who could still be elected, or arbitrarily disregarding prefernces for those candidates.

And, on a nitpick — actually, it's more than a nitpick — 10% of the quota in Dublin is not 0.1% of the vote. Dublin is a four-seat constituency. The quota is just over one-fifh of the vote, or 20%. 10% of a quota is just over 2% of the vote, twenty times bigger than you suggest.