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Yesterday's Sunday Tribune and this morning's Irish Examiner report that 800,000 extra polling cards were issued at the last general election.
The electoral register is "somewhere between 30% and 36% overstated".
Yesterday's Sunday Tribune and this morning's Irish Examiner report that 800,000 extra polling cards were issued at the last general election.
The electoral register is "somewhere between 30% and 36% overstated".
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I read this yesterday and I'm still not sure as to the accuracy of the conclusions in the article.
On the one hand it could be seen to be a form of lazy journalism, where a couple of figures are conveniently applied across the country so that a sensationalist headline can be generated to flog more papers.
On the other hand, it may indicate that there is a serious problem with our voting register and the procedures used to compile it.
If the voting register is seriously inaccurate then we have a number of serious problems that have implications for us as a democratic society:
Personation
The more inaccurate the voting register, the greater the incentive there will be for personation. Taken at it's extreme, if personation was undertaken on a co-ordinated and systemic basis (vote early and vote often) the results in a significant amount of marginal constituencies could be directly influenced by improperly recorded votes.
This might sound ridiculous, but if the co-ordinated personation is undertaken by one particular party, and overall voter turnout is low, a disproportionately high error could occur.
So - for this reason alone - it's important that the electoral register is seen to be accurate.
Turnout
We've seen a general decline in voter turnout at elections over the last 20 years. the reason put forward for this is that the electorate has become disenchanted with politics. Maybe that's not the main reason at all. If the register is inaccurate then the base for measuring turnout is also inaccurate.
Let's say the register is overstated by 10%, and the turnout for an election is calculated to be 65%. If the correct base were used the turnout would really have been 72%. That's a very significant difference.
A higher turnout always bolsters the legitimacy of any result, so it's important that the register be accurate to ensure that the electorate can be confident in results. There's also a risk that incorrectly calculated turnout figures could in turn make it more likely for voters to conclude that participation in the electoral process is a waste of time, thus perpetuating the decline in turnout over time.
Reasons for Inacuracy
The main reasons for inacuracy are probably:
- Poor effort at checking compilation of the register by the Dept. of the Environment , or its designees;
- Poor effort on the part of voters to update the register on their part;
- Increased population movement leading to duplicate recording;
- Registration of people who are not resident in the State.
What Needs to be Done and Why
The State needs to actively go about cleaning up the register now because it's vital that all citizens have confidence in election results. There should be no reason for them to have any doubts as to the legitimacy of results. Otherwise these doubts would feed into their perception of the legitimacy of government.
This may mean that the Dept. of the Environment has to shell out a fair bit of cash and send people out to collate the data, but I doubt if anyone would object to it. They should be the prime drivers in this project to remove any appearance of undue influence by the political parties. we don't have to look too far to see how they try to influence registration (postal vote debacle in the UK GE).
To be honest with you it was only at the Meath by-election that I realised how inefficient our polling and registration system is. I was explaining it to some comrades from the North who listened in appalled silence to both the registration process and the polling station operations. They argued, and it's a fine point I think, that cleaning up the register is vital for all parties and everyone could come together on this one.
Personally, I've always believed the biggest problem on the register is keeping it up to date. Tenants who move out of a house do not take their names off the register and continue to reveive polling cards. The house I last lived in while at university had five tenants, two of whom were registered and received six polling cards, four of which belonged to previous tenants.
The Sunday Tribune analyst suggesting copying the Northern system, which is an absolute disaster as it systematically removes working class voters from the register and there is almost no serious effort made to get people registered. Were it not for the political parties making sure people were on the Register the damage would be even worse. It's also worth noting that in the North 181,189 voters did not receive an application form for the 2004 Register.
We can learn a lot from the Northern system, good and bad, but a wholesale adoption of it would be disastrous.
I always found it strange that (in Dublin anyway) you can get put on the register simpmly by filling in a form, but to get your address changed you have to have the form signed by a Garda.
Personally, I think we should have one point of unique data against every name in the Electoral Register. PPS number is probably the easiest one to apply, as it's unique per eligible voter (I can't think of anyone who's eligible to vote who doesn't have a PPS number, or couldn't be quickly and easily given one) and everyone who's eligible to vote should have one (everyone over 16 is supposed to have one now). This would mean that the DOE could cross check all the Electoral Registers against each other for duplicate entries and delete them. I'm aware of a few people who are registered in more than one location (e.g. current home and parent's home), and who vote in whichever place they happen to be on polling day.
When I lived in the UK, people came around to your home to register you on the electoral list. They were really good, and actually could answer a lot of questions I had as a non-national about voting.
Cain1798 --
Can you explain in what way the Northern system removes working-class voters from the register? Is this inherent in the system or is it a symptom of corruption?
The Electoral Commission itself admits this. In December of 2003 it released a report admitting that 'disadvantaged groups' were less likely to have the identification required to vote. It goes on to imply a correlation between deprivation and precentage decline in the vote. Other research by the Electoral Commission revealed that the greatest decline in electoral registration has occurred in the top 20 most deprived electoral wards, of which, BTW 69% are Cathloic and 27% are Protestant.Originally Posted by flakie
Under this system, voters have to re-register every single year. Now for much the same reasons that turnout and registration in working class areas are low everywhere, it is made even worse by the need to do it every year. 20,000 people disappeared off the Register in 2004 alone and the Commission itself has admitted that rolling, annual registration, will lead to a continuing decline in the number of people on the Register and accepts that this will hit 'areas of disadvantage' the hardest.
Nationalist areas seem to get harder hit as well. Just before the 2004 Assembly elections the Commission admitted, and I am not making this up, it had 'forgotten' Poleglass, a large nationalist working class estate, in its voter registration drive.
On top of this there is the usual nonsense of ID cards not arriving on time, polling cards not being sent out. Overall, approximately 230,000 people have lost their right to vote as a result of this process and of those on the Register the Commission admits about 30,000 don't have the proper ID and won't be allowed to vote.
So in short, we know the system discriminates against working class people, Catholic primarily but also Protestant. The Commission knows this too. The British Government is well aware of it and so are the SDLP and the UUP who, as it happens, rely on middle class votes. The British are considering dumping the rolling registration requirement, which would be of some assistance. But the problem remains.
The 800,000 figure was arrived at by taking the estimated adult population and making an assumption that only about 80-85% bothered to register, based on an average figure across all Western democracies that was taken as read.
But I have to say I'm suspicious about this average 80-85%. What's its source? Is this average based on figures from countries like the US, where voters have to actively opt-in to register, and as a result only 70% or so of eligible voters have a vote? My guess is that the actual percentage of people registered is a good bit higher in the Republic.
If you looked at the actual table giving the number of adults counted in the census vs. the electoral register in 2002, the discrepancy is actually about 100K - perhaps 3 or 4%. The discrepancy has actually declined since the 90s.
I'd agree with cain that the Northern system of making it necessary for potential voters to jump through hoops to get registered has managed to reduce the proportion of the eligible electorate registered. That proportion was declining continuously until the requirement to re-register annually was dropped, but it has still managed to disenfranchise a lot of voters (but without significantly hampering those political parties who might have been expected to be hurt by the measure). The constituency whose electorate dropped the most as a result of the "clean-up" of the register was not Belfast West, though - it was the flat-land of Belfast South; some of the student-dominated wards there saw the electorate decline by half. 87% of the eligible electorate registered is not "high" by European standards.
I suspect that there are a good many politicians in the Republic (and not a few political journalists) who would not be unduly worried by a lot of poor, young or working-class voters - the type of people who might be disproportionately more inclined to vote for the "wrong" parties - disappearing from the register. But as in NI, the "right" result might not be guaranteed.
Does the electoral registration process need improvement? Definitely yes.
Is the problem anywhere near as bad as the Tribune paints it? Almost certainly not.
One other problem with the article is that it seems to confuse accuracy with comprehensiveness.
Comprehensiveness is a measure of the proportion of the eligible population who are registered.
Accuracy is the degree to which the entries on the electoral register are exactly correct, in terms of matching addresses, etc.
For example, if you were to move house but not immediately update your entry on the electoral register - for example, moving from one street or townland to another within the same polling district - your entry is no longer accurate, even though you may still be on the register exactly once. If you die, then your entry is inaccurate until you get taken off the register.
In theory, you could have a completely accurate electoral register without a single name on it - if there are no entries, then there can be no mistakes. The Electoral Office in NI were boasting about the extent to which the register compiled under the new regulations was more accurate, without mentioning that its comprehensiveness was declining every year - while the number of people who should have been on the register was increasing as overall population was increasing, the number of people who were on it was continually declining until an abrupt U-turn was done earlier this year.
But you need not only accuracy, but also comprehensiveness.
Odran Flynn and Shane Coleman see a figure of 80-85% accuracy and assume that it refers to comprehensiveness. So, with 3 million or so people eligible to be on the register, they assume that only 2.4 or so million are actually registered, and that the other 700K are "ghosts". But most of those 700K are inaccurate in a technical sense - e.g. if they've moved house in the last year, or they're students who live most of the time in Dublin and Cork but are registered at home - but may still only be registered to vote once.
In my own polling district at home, I can think of two sets of people whose entries are "inaccurate" in a technical sense. Both commonly live at houses in townlands X and Y respectively, but are registered to vote in townlands Y and X. Neither are registered in more than one place. Both townlands are in the same polling district, so it makes absolutely no practical difference. But they're part of the great 800,000 bogus voters if you take things literally.
More info about the Northern registration process:
http://www.parliament.the-stationery-of ... /44802.htm
Just trying to distil some points out of the contributions so far.
An accurate voting register is important to give the electorate comfort. It's in all political parties interest that the register is accurate.
The extent of inaccuracy of the voting register hasn't been determined. We don't know whether or not it is significantly inaccurate.
Accuracy of the voting register shouldn't be confused with comprehensiveness. Voters may be registered at the wrong location, but nevertheless they are registered.
The present methods of compiling the register do appear to be deficient.
Lessons can be learnt from the Northern Irish experience, but we shouldn't just slavishly follow it as there are concerns that working class voters have become disenfranchised there.
That's my take on the main points - Others may disagree.
Whatever the degree of inaccuracy at present, I think it's important that the electorate should be confident that in future the register is as accurate as possible.
A proposal to overcome the inaccuracies, and address concerns alluded to could be as follows:
- The electoral register should be matched with the PPS database.(Krazypaving's idea).
- The Dept. of the Environment should hire dedicate staff to assist in the compilation and audit of the electoral register.
- The rule of determining which address should appear on the voting register is that per the PPS no. database. The others should be removed.
- Voter Registration forms should be posted out to people who have PPS numbers and addresses, but who are not on the voting register.
- DoE dedicated staff should call to as many addresses as possible to register voters, particularly if voter registration forms are not returned.
- The voting resister should continue to be compared with the PPS database at regular intervals.
- The voting register should be continually audited by DoE staff by spot checks.
- The voting register should be capable of inspection on-line (This one might be a bit iffy from a data protection point of view).
Not an exclusive list, but something to discuss.
It is also worth noting that there are geographical differences in relation to to accuracy of the register. Rural areas, by and large, except for commuted belt areas (such as the rural environs of towns), tended to be over-registered, in that the numbers on the register tend to be much higher than the valid adult population (those aged 18, and over) or VAP. Within Dublin, the Blanchardstown area and the Inner City were seriously under-registered, in that the VAP is much higher than the numbers on the register, which is an even more serious problem given that some people on these registers are now living in different addresses and hence the discrepancy is even greater. Part of this discrepancy may be accounted for, however, by the fact that 'culchies' living in these areas are opting to keep their votes in their 'home communities' down the country, which also accounts for the over-registratation of rural Ireland in part. The more rural and middle class/settled parts of Dublin tend to be over-registered.
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