How I’ll be getting three votes — again
By: Michael O’Farrell
IT’S the most important election for decades – yet almost two years after I was allowed to vote at three different polling stations in the local and European elections, sloppy record-keeping means that at this election I could once again vote in three separate constituencies.
The astonishing lapse comes even though in 2009, this newspaper published precise details and photographs revealing how easy it was to cast a ballot paper in polling stations in three counties.
This week both Kildare County Council and Meath County Council confirmed that I remained on their updated respective electoral registers and was entitled to vote – even though I had relocated years ago to Kildare, where I will actually vote.
The revelation seems to suggest that the ‘new’ register is still open to abuse despite the scandal I revealed two years ago. Back then, to ensure that my investigation did not alter the course of the elections in any way, I voted legitimately once and spoiled all further votes.
But the exercise demonstrated just how easy it would be for a determined and organised campaign of fraudulent voters to alter the course of an election.
By law, each county council could have launched a prosecution against me under the Electoral Act. At the very least, they should have acted to remove inaccurate entries from the register.
But two years on, there is nothing to prevent me – and possibly thousands of others – from once again voting in Westmeath, Meath and Kildare.
To put the issue in context, many elections in Ireland are decided by no more than a few hundred votes, while some seats are won and lost by just a handful.
In some general elections, a few hundred ballots in a handful of constituencies could could have had a dramatic effect on the shape of the Dáil.
In the 2002 general election, 40% of all final seats were won by fewer than 400 votes while 20% of final seats were decided by less than 100 votes.
With the fight for final seats often so close in a PR system, it would take only a small fraudulent effort to alter the course of an election – something which would be next to impossible to detect given the problems with the electoral register.
In the past, the Irish Mail on Sunday has published disturbing evidence of orchestrated campaigns to register numerous individuals on the supplemental register at vacant rental properties connected to or owned by candidates.
Yet despite these concerns, no political party has sought to implement measures to rectify the problems with the electoral register. Instead, they have urged as many people as possible to register. Ciarán Lynch, Labour’s local government spokesman, said: ‘I would urge everyone to make one last effort to check and ensure that they are included on the electoral register.’
In October 2009, several months after the original MoS investigation, Mr Lynch addressed the problem. ‘I have consistently argued that our electoral register system needs to be revamped. I believe that we need a single national commission that would take on board the present operating functions that are held by the 34 local authorities,’ he said.
Shortly after that, in January 2010, Fine Gael’s Seanad justice spokesman Eugene Regan called for the system to be corrected.
Just two simple steps – linking the register of electors to PPS numbers and taking control of the registers away from councils, which don’t communicate with each other – would immediately eliminate the problem. But the introduction of these steps remains years away.
In the meantime, it is estimated that almost half a million opportunities for voter fraud remain if errors in previous registers continue to be replicated.
Although voter fraud – a criminal offence under the Electoral Acts – has been frequently acknowledged in past elections, no successful prosecutions for electoral fraud have even been taken.
None of the councils contacted by the MoS this week even knew of a case that had been considered.
The only attempted prosecution involved Charles Haughey’s former election agent, the late Pat O’Connor, in 1982. The case collapsed on a technicality but O’Connor became forever known as ‘Pat O’Connor Pat O’Connor’.
A 2008 report by the Oireachtas Environment, Heritage and Local Government Committee recommended that control over registers be removed from local authorities and given to a new independent electoral commissioner’s office.
It also recommended that voters should be forced to allow their PPS numbers be logged against their name in the register – a move that would allow cross referencing between different areas to prevent fraudsters voting more than once.
In February 2009, the thenenvironment minister John Gormley published a report on the establishment of an electoral commission, which would be tasked with compiling and maintaining an accurate register. The commission could have been established had the Fianna Fáil/PD government not voted down Labour legislation to set it up in 2005.
10.30AM DELVIN, CO. WESTMEATH 10.50AM CLONARD, CO. MEATH 11.25AM MAYNOOTH, CO. KILDARE I BEGAN voting at 10.30am On Friday, June 5, 2009, at the national school in Delvin, Co. Westmeath, my local polling station.
One hour, 41km and three polling stations later, I had voted in three constituencies. I had registered to vote in Westmeath a couple of weeks earlier by applying to have my name on the supplemental register. I was entitled to do so as I had moved to the area since the last election. A quick download of the form from the web and a visit to the local Garda station for a signature and stamp was all that was needed.
No-one sought evidence of my address and no-one asked for ID. Twenty minutes down the road at Clonard National School in Co. Meath, I simply produced my passport, saying my wife had inadvertently taken my voting card in her car to work. Another 25km further on, in Maynooth, Co.
Kildare, the officials accepted my voting card without question, allowing me to vote in a third constituency.
‘You do live in Maynooth?,’ asked the female official looking for my name on the list. ‘Born and bred,’ I replied truthfully, although not answering her question. There was no request for identification.
THIS STORY WAS FiRST PUBLISHED IN THE IRISH MAIL ON SUNDAY ON 13/02/2011. Author, Michael O’Farrell, Investigative Correspondent
