All eyes fixed on elections, or are they? We need to talk about turnout
Tracey Holsgrove
I love elections. I’ve voted in every election I have been eligible to vote in. I also love election results. I’m not a number cruncher like some of the experts you’d see on the TV coverage but I am fascinated by watching votes play out and seeing how voting patterns emerge.
I grew up in England with the ‘first-past-the-post’ (FPTP) system and while that usually makes for faster election results, there is something special about the way we vote here.
My first general election vote was in the UK in 1992 and I was one of the many who were ‘still up for Portillo’ in the Labour landslide of 1997. I will be glued to the results on July 4th this year for the UK general election. If anyone passing through Oldcastle that night hears whooping coming from a house it’ll be me.
I moved to Ireland in 2002, although I’ve been an Irish citizen since birth. My first chance to vote in an Irish election was in the local elections of 2004 and I had taken time to read up on the single transferable vote (PR-STV) that we use here. However, I was still a little apprehensive going in to vote that I was actually going to fill in the ballot paper correctly. But I soon got the hang of it and listening to the results of that election coming through over the following days got me hooked.
It was the first time I really felt aware of the people who were looking for my vote. I’d bump into them in the local shops, or see them in the GP’s waiting room. I had never experienced that in England.
It gives a sense of accountability and approachability regarding local councillors that I hadn’t felt before. It definitely made me think more deeply about who I was voting for, and impacted on how I voted.
This sense has only strengthened over the last twenty years and while I accept not many people are as nerdy as me when it comes to election results, I find it rather depressing that the turnout for elections is often quite poor. In the local elections in 2004 the turnout in Kells LEA was 62%. This year it was 55%. That’s not good.
All too often we all hear complaints like “Sure the council is useless, they don’t do anything about.”
Now, I know that local authorities do not have unlimited powers and I also know that elected representatives have to work with the executive of the local council. But I do frequently find myself wondering how many of those complaining about the council (for whatever reason) actually turned out and voted?
How many are even on the electoral register? How many people know how to correctly fill out a ballot paper? There were reports from all around the country this year of ballots where four, five, or six candidates had ticks next to their names, but no clear preference could be ascertained from that.
The people who filled out those ballot papers took the time to turn up at their local polling station and vote, yet those votes cannot be counted. Was this because they simply did not know how to fill the paper in correctly? And if that is the case, then who or what is at fault here?
I don’t know how to improve turnout. I don’t know the reasons why turnout is declining. But its something that needs to be addressed.
Maybe by some kind of public information campaign? Maybe not using schools as polling stations would help a bit - it does create childcare issues for many, and alienating potential voters isn’t a great idea. Maybe voting on a weekend when the schools are closed? I don’t have the answers. But I do think we need to be asking the questions.