Damien Blake: Solution To The Register is in Government’s Hands
Read more about: Donegal North East, Electoral Register, Fianna Fail, Guest Posts 
Damien Blake is Mayor of Letterkenny for Fianna Fail and has his own personal blog here.
The subject of the disgraceful condition of the Electoral Register has received much press coverage recently. So too have the comments of some senior FF ministers regarding the register, and its alleged abuse.
The electoral register is a vital piece of our democratic infrastructure; its integrity is central to the integrity of our entire electoral system. So what can be done to bring it up to scratch?
Daragh O’Brien has posted some excellent pieces on the current situation on the register, and how it can be fixed by correlating the existing data with the PPS numbers, issued to every citizen for interactions with the Government. I write this piece not to argue with Daragh. I have learned much from his writings, and I’m sure they will make their way into many undergraduate (and postgrad) theses. My intention is to put forward another option.
Scrap the current register.
Completely.
Rather than trying to validate the data in the current Register with the unique PPSN of each voter, I propose starting again.
When I turned 16, my RSI number (now PPS number) arrived on a card in the post. The same should happen when you turn 18; you should be notified that you have been registered to vote, and given the opportunity to correct any errors in your registration data.
The Revenue Commissioners make use of my PPS number to keep all my records together. When I check into Hospital, they use my PPSN to track my information and medical history. The Dept of Social Welfare makes wide use of the PPSN. Why should the Dept of Environment be any different? (I ask that as a legitimate question- there may be reasons that I don’t know about).
So why can the Dept of Environment not start again with the Electoral Register, using the data that already exist? They know our dates of birth, addresses and citizenships. What more information do they need?
This raises questions about the sharing of sensitive information between Government Departments. That, I feel, is a question for another day. I’m not proposing giving the Government any more information than they already have, nor giving them any more powers to use it.
Alternatively, responsibility for the Electoral Register could be moved to another Department which already maintains a Database connected to the PPSN, most likely the Dept of Social Welfare, or establish a new Statutory Agency tasked with maintaining the register (a situation I do not favour; we have enough agencies!).
I believe that registering to vote should be as simple as possible- automatic in the perfect scenario- but that fraudulent voting should be made more difficult. When I put the automatic registration point to some of the Ministers I have met, they all talk about fraud. The place for checking against fraud is at the polls, not on the register. ID should be an absolute requirement for anyone looking to vote.
Which brings us to the issue of personation. Noel Ahern TD, Minister of State at the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affaires, went to great lengths on Sunday’s The Week In Politics to infer (without saying it) that Sinn Fein were abusing the errors in the register. I can’t comment on that; he gave no evidence, and didn’t mention any specific incidents.
I have been informed by sources I trust completely that there were incidents of attempted impersonation at the last local elections here in Letterkenny, none of which were connected with Sinn Fein. This information would not be actionable. If the Minister has any information that would be of use to the Gardai, he should pass it on. If not, he should stop muddying the debate with rumour and innuendo.
The current proposal to use Census Enumerators to check the register has many holes in it. As has been noted, there is no guarantee the Enumerators would stay on to do the work. From personal experience, many enumerators I have met are sick to death of the job already, and would be unwilling to extend their time. I also doubt that it would be a good use of time or money in this circumstance. We should accept that the register is heavily flawed, and that our system for compiling, editing and validating the register is equally flawed, and start again.
It is in everyone’s best interest that the Electoral System is beyond reproach. This starts with root and branch reform of the Register. I believe this would be best achieved by starting again, rather than trying to find common ground between the differing templates of Local Authorities across the State. The next election is a year away; this may be the best opportunity we get to resolve the problem. If the Government truly believes that Sinn Fein will abuse the register, they have a responsibility to ensure the system is as bullet proof as possible by then.
Damien Blake is Mayor of Letterkenny for Fianna Fail and has his own personal blog here.
But many PPS holders are non-nationals, who are not entitled to vote. That is the hole in this suggestion.
Is nationality not recorded with pps numbers. Surely if they know who is 16 and not 18 they can know nationality
Of course they can distinguish since a PPS for new-comers are issued specifically and can be tagged as a result.
It is possible to input some code of entitlements surely i.e. 1=full voting rights 2=Local and EU etc as the case requires. All newly issued PPS get the code required and those generated automatically are assigned 1 by default or something.
Brian,
Non-nationals, who are here legally, have voting entitlements at Local Election level (as far as I understand). It’s not simply an issue of having a vote or not having a vote- for example, UK citizens can vote in Dail, European and Local pols, but other EU citizens can only vote in Euro and Local polls. Only Irish Citizens can vote for President and in referendums. This is all catered for in the current register, and as such could easily be catered for in any new system.
D
I have responded to Damien’s post here http://obriend.com/blog/?p=25. I agree with a lot of what Damien has put forward as a solution.
Scrapping the election in its entirety is a valid step. However, to do so in the absence of a clear strategy to identify and address root causes will fix the problem of today but will not prevent the problems of tomorrow.
Daragh,
My concern with your posts is that I’m afraid I’m oversimplifying the issue when I simply say “throw it out”. I come from something of an IT background, but not so much on the Data Quality side. Your post is blank at the mo, but I’ll check it again in a bit.
If you go to your local authority website you can check the electoral register
Post has been updated.. it was blank while I put the links together.
If you want to learn more on the data quality side (which isn’t an IT issue per se).
The analogy I would give is that Information is water. Information Technology is plumbing. Information Quality makes sure that you aren’t filling the kettle from the loo (Information Architecture) and that the water is fit to drink and wash yourself.
I read your post, another excellent piece of writing. I’ve posted my response on Daragh’s site.
Damien,
As a matter of curiousity, do you know if Minister of State Ahern is the only Minister of State to serve simultaneously in two separate government Departments? I’m glad I checked because initially I though you’d made an error in attaching him to Community Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs (in addition to DEHLG).
Simon, not all local authorities offer the ability to check the register online. And what is with this whole business of inconsistency between local authorities on the issue of the register? What are we the United States of Ireland? Does Cavan (or any other county for that matter) have a separate constitution we don’t know about allow it to do its own thing when it comes to compiling the register?
How about this as a crazy idea?
Use the electronic forms (these do exist0 of the register to generate addresses for envelopes for letters to be sent to every voter on the register. Send every voter a form with a stamped address envelope which has their name and address as on the register and a place for them to enter their PPSN and then to drop it back in the post.
Surely that is a straight forward distribution job. A big one but straightforward enough. The post bill might on the surface look like 2 million euros but I’m sure the government could get a discount for such a big job.
Then simply hire in students or those looking for temporary work. It is then just a massive data entry job to bring all that information together and a data processing job to ensure that the PPS numbers are valid, that the people are alive, that people are on the system once only.
Pay €15 per hour for the entry and say you got 60 per hour that would be 480 per day per person at a cost of €120 per day so we be paying 25c per entry. So 2 million votes would be €500K, those figures are rough and I’m not sure what rates data entry pays or what exact speeds we should expect in order to have decent accuracy.
You hire 100 people temporarily and at 48,000 entries per day they would be done in 40 days. Eight weeks or two months. Double that number employed to ensure that the data entry people are just typing and others are opening the envelopes and separating and sorting the forms. It would be kind of like a massive election count effort. At night the database so far created could be cross checked against the revenue and individuals work can reviewed daily also to ensure that no larger scale systematic mistakes are made.
Folks, this need not be a party political issue other than to suggest that if no real action is taken the those in power are incompetent.