This is a local election for local people - there is nothing for you here!

[originally post to Comin's 'N Goin's]

It is right that students and those working away from home should complain about disenfranchisement. The Irish tradition of holding midweek elections is perhaps the best way of ensuring an inadequate turnout at the polls.

Holding the General Election on a Thursday, while at the same time encouraging young people to vote, is a glaring contradiction. Many of our neighbours hold elections on a Sunday and the 85% turnout in the first round of the presidential elections in France is the only example needed to illustrate that weekend voting works.

It is not only the timing of the election that is out of sync with other countries. On RTE television last week I enviously watched coverage of hundreds of French citizens queuing outside their embassy in Dublin ready to cast their vote. Unfortunately the same privilege is not extended to Irish citizens living abroad. Ireland is in a minority of democracies that does not allow its citizens living abroad to cast a vote at the respective embassy or by postal voting.

This is doubly enraging given that citizens of another sovereign state, the UK, are entitled to vote in the Irish General Election since the Ninth Amendment of the Constitution Act, 1984. There may well be an argument for allowing Northern Ireland residents to vote in Irish elections but I fail to see the rationale behind English, Scots and Welsh having the right to vote for Dail Eireann candidates. I can’t think of one other EU country (apart from the UK in this reciprocal agreement) that allows citizens of another state to vote in its parliamentary elections. Permitting UK citizens to vote for Dail Eireann candidates while disenfranchising Irish citizens living abroad is a contradiction of massive proportions.

I contacted all the main political parties about this anomoly and only received two replies. Brian Keane, the Sinn Fein Director of Communications, informed me that it is “Sinn Féin policy to extend the postal vote system to those Irish citizens living abroad. There seems to be resistance to this from many of the other parties to this, possibly due to the fact that the likely outcome would be a large vote for Sinn Féin from the expatriate community.” While it might be considered wishful thinking that expatriates would vote in large numbers for Sinn Fein, his observation is nonetheless valid.

The only other person to reply to me, Quentin Gargan, Green Party candidate in Cork South West, said he “can’t help feeling that people who live overseas would be less likely to vote for the main parties, which is why that situation prevails.” It is not beyond the realms of possibility that there is a cosy consensus amongst the main political parties to keep voting local. All politics is of course local and the best way of maintaining this is ensuring a local country for local people. I would surprised if I receive a reply from the other parties. I wonder how many replies I would have received if I had complained about potholes instead?

UPDATE: I have just received an email from Fine Gael outlining their joint policy with Labour on emigrants. They propose emigrants should have a senator to represent them in the Seanad but say nothing about extending the vote to emigrants. While there are arguments against extending the vote to Irish citizens who permanently live abroad, these same arguments do not apply to Irish people who are studying or working abroad on a temporary basis. Ireland stands alone in Europe in refusing to allow such persons to vote. During the last General Election, I was studying in Germany for a year as part of the Erasmus programme. I had to fly home to vote. Thousands of Irish people are in this position but seemingly they will remain disenfranchised.