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Register cleanup prevents voters from voting…
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We’re picking up rumours of valid voters being prevented from voting. We have no indication of scale or geographical spread, but it is hardly surprising, since the register was thought to be up 15% inaccurate by polling day, and the parties had already assembled their legal teams well in advance. The final scale will tell whether this is a story with legs… It is, as they say, too early to tell…
Nothing that can be done if the voter isn’t on the register. There was a draft register published, people had the opportunity to check it. If they didn’t check and see that they weren’t included, then it’s not the Returning Officers’ fault.
The price of freedom/democracy is vigilance. How many of these people listened to the publicity at the time and bothered checking they were on the register? I found out a few months ago I had been deleted despite filling in the forms so I rang the council and got back on.
i would have to agree with you both above but it seemed that some people (listening to the last word) were on the checktheregister.ie site but not on the list on polling day. If that is true then blame is not entirely resting with those voters.
Many are likely to simply have not checked. It was well flagged.
On a side not mick, those legal teams are likely to be set on certain results too. I think trevor mentioned a willingness to challenge results on the basis of the census. Depends on the findings in the mcGrath/murphy case one would guess.
Well I Just got back into the country after a 6 month business trip and guess what? I was not on the register. The closing date was 2 weeks ago and there is absolutely nothing that can be done until after the election.
It wasn’t 2 weeks ago for the Supplementary Register - you had until 11 days before polling to get on that.
Hang on - there are reported cases where people are not on the register who checked online previously after the deadline passes and were present. They figured they were ’safe’ only to discover that due to electronic transfer issues, (read civil servants don’t know how to cut and paste) they have been removed from the registers in use at the actual polling centers, not the register merely the lists they consult. Given the distinct lack of computers to simply check the register in any polling station, I’d safely bet that there will be legal challenges to several results if they are that close or maybe just for the sake of doing the right thing to secure their vote.
People who swear an affidavit (at the least) that they found themselves on the CheckTheRegister website, but are now not on the register, would have a legal basis to challenge a result where the result was decided by one vote. They’d have a very, very difficult time challenging a result that their individual vote wouldn’t have changed. And class action suits don’t really exist in Ireland, so it would be difficult to get a court to rule on, say, 100 voters who were disenfranchised where the result was decided by less than 100 votes.
The courts have previously been very slow to overturn any electoral results on the basis that it’s not in the “national interest”. A flawed concept, but it’s what they’ve said before.
How would that jurisprudence affect the cases taken by the two indpendents? If a court grants that minister roche had time and information to make changes but didnt, is a challenge to a result (close enough to be affected) likely (and likely to succeed)?
Im not a lawyer but that sounds like a sound case if the court held he could but didnt.
I didn’t get a polling card and I went over and they said I wasn’t on the register. I have lived at my address for 18 years and have voted in every other election and was taken off the register with out my permission. I was denied my right and an Irish citizen to vote.
* spelling error “I was denied my right as an Irish citizen to vote.”