Active Citizenship and a Weekend Vote

I decided to merge these two since they are related. First a quick update on the weekend vote petition. It is just over a week since we kicked off the petition for a weekend vote this General Election. We have gone over the arguments and there is healthy debate over the rights and wrongs of it. It is great to see that over 420 people have signed so far, this includes representatives of all the major opposition parties, including Pat Rabbitte and Trevor Sargent*. Thanks to all of you who have signed up and please keep signing, emailing people to sign and mentioning it to colleagues at work. We are working on the next steps to bring the petition to a larger audience any ideas or help is welcome.

Now the Active Citizenship Report;

The Taskforce on Active Citizenship arose from the September ‘05 address by Robert Putnam to the Fianna Fail think-in. It didn’t get the acres of headlines in its report that it got in the setting up but such is life. The report represents quite an interesting departure for the Irish Government while at the same time maintaining the familiar order of things.

Their report to government is a very readable and colourful forty pages. The most surprising thing to me is how they managed to sneak political efficacy in under the terms of reference. When it was set up much criticism was levelled at the way in which the terms of reference seemed to hollow out an idea of active citizenship to one of voluntary community action. The difference between these two is crucial.

One can be an active community member with the right disposition. All that is required is a sense of fairness, a desire to help, a love of people and other laudable qualities. However to be an active community member requires little in terms of political power. Once can quite happily continue working in the community (at the pleasure of the powers that be) without a vote or any legal-political standing such as citizenship. Therefore citizenship is more than the enmeshing of the individual in the community, it is also the enmeshing of the people in the political process.

The distinguishing characteristic of citizenship is the entitlement to choose your rulers. The degree to which this is done and can be done is one of the puzzles from antiquity which gets another run out thanks to the internet. So it seems absolutely necessary that any taskforce would talk about political action as much as community action. Such was the scepticism over the whole process from conception to its timetable for completion before the general election, it is good to see some recommendations in there in this regard.

The eye-catching political aspect is the recommendation that the government;

the establishment of an independent Electoral Commission with a mandate to:
- encourage everyone who is eligible to register and vote in elections through (i) organisation e.g. timing of voting, postal voting and (ii) appropriate publicity campaigns, explanatory material
- support voter education programmes (i) through the formal education system and (ii) in community, adult education and other settings, with special priority for persons in disadvantaged areas, young people and the growing ethnic and cultural diversity in Ireland
- provide data, research and analysis on the issue of political engagement and awareness the mandate of the Commission should also include either direct oversight of the voter registration process, or an advisory role in relation to management of the register. In this context, the potential of the use of Personal Public Service Numbers (PPSN) to maintain an up-to-date register should be pursued.

This is a very healthy recommendation, one which I fully support. It does occur to me that a very clear and simple signal that the government will take this advice on board is to hold a weekend election. It will boost turnout and is a far preferable day to Thursday for many (see the CSO survey of voting attitudes 2002). Political participation begins for all (and ends for many) at voting. Maximising the vote in a couple of weeks time is a signal the Fianna Fail are committed to active citizens (even ones who disagree with them) rather than the wonderful headlines about social capital and caring Taoisigh.

*Thanks to those TDs who signed so far, Trevor Sargent, Ciaran Cuffe and Dan Boyle (Green Party), Pat Rabbitte, Ruairi Quinn and Eamon Gilmore (Labour), Caoimhighn O Caolain and Aengus O Snodaigh (Sinn Fein), Michael Ring and Tom Hayes (Fine Gael) and Finian McGrath.