Irish Election are pleased to announce our collection of Irish 
Seanad Ballots: Tight Schedule for Overseas Voters
Read more about: Democracy, Emmigration, Seanad
I’m not sure how idiosyncratic the issues raised in this post are, so if the title catches your attention, read on.
Shane Ross noted on 2nd July that most of the university panel ballots should have arrived by then. Being on the DU panel electorate, I was beginning to wonder, not having seen sight of the ballot a week later. Yesterday finally a note from the US Postal Service indicating a registered letter requiring my signature, so down to the Post Office today in blazing heat to pick it up. As ballots are due on the 24th, there’s still time to get it in.
But the paper trail for the letter seems to indicate that it was sitting with my postman or at the post office since 29th June. I surmise that the the ballots were mailed out in good time, and got across the Atlantic in good time, but that the follow-through on this side is not as energetic as it could be. At the minimum it might be worth looking carefully through whatever post you are getting for the easy-to-lose brown slip indicating that they are trying to deliver registered mail. For people on holidays, the problems multiply but I suppose that’s part of the price of being abroad. It’s a shame though as the Seanad vote for graduates is one of the few footholds those abroad have in the political system.
Guys,
judging by the scarcity of comments on your posts about the Senate election, do you think because it’s essentially irrelevant?
I still haven’t had it adequately explained that because I have “the benefits of a classical education”
I have a vote, yet many of my neighbours do not. There doesn’t seem to be the will to change it. It’s the same apathy that was present in the last presidential
electionappointment.Personally I think we need to write a new constitution. It seems to be one of the required mantras of Irish politics that Dev’s constitution was so great but it’s been amended almost beyond recognition now while retaining various things that now look like 1930s ananchronisms. Like the Senate. Still, FF are worried enough about potential road blocks in the Senate to in effect be running candidates on the university panels so it’s not completely a lost cause.