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Voting method

geographica

if say you have 10 people on the ballot, and you only want to vote for say 2 people, and you want no one else to get transfers from your vote, does one just put 1 and 2 on the paper and leave everything else blank? Does this ensure no other candidate benefits from your vote?

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plodder

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122215739#Comment_122215739

In a word, no. Think of it as a race to the quota at the front and a race to avoid elimination at the rear. The more first preferences you have give you a lead in the race but nothing more. In some exceptional cases, you might make it in the first count. But, mostly it takes multiple counts to get there. The system tries hard to keep people in the race as long as possible, by distributing surpluses before doing eliminations, but eventually it always comes to a stage where the back markers have to be eliminated and their next preferences distributed, so all the seats get filled. It sometimes happens that the last one or two leaders don't make it to the quota (eg if what people are talking about here happens, and voters don't vote down the ballot for lower preferences). In that case, these candidates get elected without crossing the finish line, because there are no more votes to be redistributed.

Collie D

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122216519#Comment_122216519

Great post/example.

geographica

definition of a “polling station”?

is a polling station the whole building of say a community centre or school?

there were many many posters within 50 metres of our polling station yesterday (the building), was told they at the centre decided it was from the gate not the actual building

Not sure there is a definitive definition?

Peregrinus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122233417#Comment_122233417

It's up to the presiding officer to enforce the rules, so what he things is included in the "polling station" tends to be what matters.

To some extent it's going to depend on the kind of premises in which the polling station is located. But a great many of them are in primary schools, and it's a fairly well-established understanding that the polling station extends to the schoolyard gate. I think most presiding officers take that view.

Capt'n Midnight

Aontú's Melissa Byrne and Sinn Féin's James Stokes were very close in Newbridge, Kildare.

Count 10 went down to the wire, with both Melissa Byrne and James Stokes winding up with 1098 votes apiece.
However, Melissa had more first preference votes, so James was eliminated.

And then there were the recounts

https://kildare-nationalist.ie/2024/06/12/white-smoke-in-newbridge-lea/

A fourth recount was requested by Aontú’s Melissa Byrne in the early
hours and the count team are currently deliberating on it. It is worth
noting that none of the four counts so far, the initial count and three
recounts, have returned the same final figures.

plodder

Kathy Sheridan in the Irish Times wrestled with this problem, deciding to both vote up and down the ballot, then discovering she had two number 12's on it at the end. That wouldn't count as a spoilt vote though. So long as a vote has a valid #1 it's not spoiled. It would just become non-transferrable in the unlikely event it got to #12.

What she might have done was she went to the polling clerk and asked for a new ballot, making the original one technically spoiled, but not counted as such at the count. I'd guess most people don't realise you can do that.

https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2024/06/12/kathy-sheridan-i-ranked-among-that-much-derided-category-of-people-who-spoil-their-vote/

geographica

Might be of help to some - https://www.electoralcommission.ie/how-to-vote/

[Deleted User]

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122253183#Comment_122253183

She could also have scribbled out one of the 12s and replaced it with a 13. Once there is a clear preference expressed, the returning officer will let it through.

Victor

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122842998#Comment_122842998

The scribbling could be considered an identifying mark, which would invalidate the entire vote.

L1011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122843104#Comment_122843104

It wouldn't be. I've been in the room when questionable ballots were adjudicated on.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122843104#Comment_122843104

From the UK - https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2019/may/26/european-elections-2019-results-eu-election-parliament-brexit-party-farage-tories-may-live?page=with%3Ablock-5ceb01e88f08ad67f1a818fd 26 May 201923.40 CEST

Chris Williams, an agent for the Green party in Leicester, has told the Guardian that he has seen scores of spoilt ballots, apparently forged by pro-Brexit voters.
Slogans such as ‘Brexit now’, ‘We need brexit’ and ‘We’ve already voted on this’ were scrawled next to Brexit, he said, but the electors neglected to vote for either Ukip or the Brexit party.
Williams had been checking the disputed ballots as part of his duties as an election agent, and also found one ballot which had ‘****’ written in every single box apart from that of the Green party. The voter left a note saying ‘not ****’ for the environmentalist party which was deemed acceptable as a vote.

plodder

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122843150#Comment_122843150

I don't think you can state categorically that would be true always, because the decision is ultimately down to "the opinion of the returning officer". If he/she had a suspicion that the alteration was part of some vote identification scheme, they would be within their rights to exclude and ultimately nobody would succeed in challenging it. They would point to the fact that the voter can obtain a fresh ballot to correct an error like that.

Victor

I suppose part of it would be down to how many ballots were marked like this. If it was a few, it would be unlikely to part of an irregular scheme to obtain votes. However, if it appeared to be systematic, then that would be another matter.

Peregrinus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122846305#Comment_122846305

Other way round. If there is a large number of ballots with corrections/changes of mind marked on them, then this not an device for identifying an individual ballot. What will bother a returning officer is some non-standard mark on the paper which is likely to be unique, or nearly so.

plodder

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122855864#Comment_122855864

Though a generic correction on some set of ballots might arouse suspicions if they all had #1 for the same candidate.

But there are easier ways nowadays of proving how you voted. As far as I can tell, it's still not illegal here to take a selfie with your filled out ballot, before dropping it in the box. It is illegal in the UK and many other jurisdictions.

Peregrinus

It's an offence under Electoral Act 1992 s. 137(4)(b) for a person to communicate at any time to another person any information obtained in a polling station as to the candidate for whom a voter in that station is about to vote or has voted.

So taking a ballot selfie may not be an offence, but showing to to anyone else is.

plodder

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122856119#Comment_122856119

So, does that mean exit polls are illegal then? Or telling your mates how you voted, down the pub afterwards?

There was a discussion of the exact point in a previous old thread and the view was that provision relates to polling station workers rather than voters.

It probably applies to other voters as well. ie if Mrs Murphy spots Mrs Kelly putting her number one for the Freedom Party, Mrs Murphy would be committing an offence if she tells someone else who Mrs Kelly voted for.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2057054119/is-it-prohibited-to-take-a-picture-of-your-voting-slip

Peregrinus

It refers to a person in a polling station. Exit polls are fine because they happen outside the station.

Telling your mates how you voted is fine, but showing them the photo you took in the polling station is not.

The section probably is mainly directed at polling officers, etc. But the wording refers to everyone in the polling station, which obviously includes voters. And the underlying policy is to protect the secrecy of the ballot, so there is no policy reason to read the section down so that a voter is taken not to be a person in a polling station.

Having said that, I'm not aware of anyone having been prosecuted for publishing a ballot selfie, and there have been a number of instances of ballot selfies being published.

[Deleted User]

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122846228#Comment_122846228

While you can't state categorically, you CAN state that those of us who have been present when questionable votes are reviewed by the returning officer in the presence of the agents of candidates will have seen simple corrections to votes, scribbling out of one number and replacement with another number, sometimes in the margins rather than in the designated space on the paper, routinely accepted by returning officers, where the voter's preference was clear. That's what happens in the real world.

Montage of Feck

Technology is enslaving humanity, I'm sure AI will wipe us out the first chance it gets! The ballot selfie will destroy modern democracy if not cracked down on, it's plays nicely with gombeen machine politics.

plodder

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122856163#Comment_122856163

It is very badly worded if that is really the intention. But, I don't think it was the intention originally.

It refers to a person in a polling station. Exit polls are fine because they happen outside the station.

But, the information as to how the voter voted was obtained inside the polling station.

Telling your mates how you voted is fine, but showing them the photo you took in the polling station is not.

In general, we don't have a problem with people telling others how they voted. What we need to protect is ballot secrecy and voters being able to prove how they voted (to a high level of confidence) and that's why many jurisdictions have specific laws against taking photos of your ballot.

The difference between telling an exit pollster how you voted and posting a photo of your ballot on Facebook is only the level of proof of how you voted, not the information itself.

The section probably is mainly directed at polling officers, etc. But the wording refers to everyone in the polling station, which obviously includes voters. And the underlying policy is to protect the secrecy of the ballot, so there is no policy reason to read the section down so that a voter is taken not to be a person in a polling station.
Having said that, I'm not aware of anyone having been prosecuted for publishing a ballot selfie, and there have been a number of instances of ballot selfies being published.

it's interesting there is a wikipedia article on ballot selfies, and the section on Ireland says there are "strict laws" here against it, but the article references a newspaper clip that says "Selfies in the polling booth are a bad idea, says Department" 😀

Maybe there is some other provision in electoral law that outlaws photography in polling stations, but I can't find a reference to one. The electoral commission faq says nothing about the question.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballot_selfie

Peregrinus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122856170#Comment_122856170

Yeah. The returning officer is generally asking himself two questions. First, is the voter's preference clear? Second, is this non-standard method of completing a ballot paper likely to be a device to facilitate identifying the ballot paper and linking it to a known voter? In most case the first question receives far more attention, because most questionable markings are clearly not attempts to identify the ballot paper — they involve corrections, erasures etc or they involve the writing of commonplace abuse against politicians on the paper (as well as completing it correctly).

Most returning officers take the view that commonplace abuse ("Crooks!" "Gangsters!" "Shower of bastards!") is not an identification mechanism, precisely because it's commonplace. More than one ballot will have things like this on written on it. But if you write something distinctive then, yeah, your ballot paper is at real risk of being ruled out. I know of one case, quite a few years ago, in which a paper with a (really quite witty) limerick on it, referrring to one candidate by name in very unflattering terms, was ruled out. At the same election a second equally distinctive insuit had been written on a separate sheet of paper and put into the ballot box, presumably inside a folded ballot paper. The very first stage of counting involves taking all the ballot papers out of the box, unfolding them and flattening them; at that stage the insult became detached from the ballot paper that it had been folded with, so no identification was possible, so no exclusion resulted.

Moral: if you want your vote to count, but also want your wit and wisdom to be heard by large numbers of people at the count centre, put it on a separate sheet of paper.

(Then there was the ballot paper smeared with what appeared from the smell to be human excrement. God know how the voter in question managed to get that into the box — there isn't that much privacy in the polling booth. That would probablhy have been ruled out, except that the question never arose — no preference was expressed.)

Victor

"That would probablhy have been ruled out, except that the question never arose — no preference was expressed."

I think a negative preference was expressed. 😮

plodder

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122856170#Comment_122856170

Sure, I've watched it myself and the returning officers do go out of their way to facilitate people's votes being counted, usually in opposition to other candidates trying to get them excluded.

We have a secure and fair voting system. People can become complacent about its qualities though and potential threats posed by technology and other developments. Eg the push for wider postal voting seems to naively assume that there won't be any resulting problem with coercion/vote buying.

plodder

Just on taking selfies with your ballot, I made some enquiries about this. Interestingly, there isn't a specific prohibition on photography in polling stations not least because the media will be there tomorrow morning taking photos of party leaders casting their ballot. But, in terms of maintaining the secrecy of the ballot (which is a legal requirement) taking selfies or photos of your ballot will almost certainly be against the rules, and presiding officers have clear legal rights to maintain order in polling stations, enforced by gardai or other staff present. That said, if someone were to take a photo unknown to the polling staff, and then post it online, I remain unconvinced that they would be committing an offence.

Best not to risk it though as it is against the rules.

Quantum Erasure

I saw it mentioned on the 6.1 news again that taking selfies in the polling station is against the law ...