On the day of the general election, Holly Cairns’s Instagram account had a clear message: Vote for Holly. It wasn’t just an ask of her constituents in Cork, but a broader request. “So it turns out I won’t be able to vote today, but you can,” the caption read. The leader of the Social Democrats was on a hospital maternity ward having just given birth.
For people who care deeply about the democratic process, low voter turnout figures can be depressing. There are three issues here: accuracy, engagement, and convenience. All three need to be addressed, and these five ways could help.
1. Fix the register
The first thing is to clean up the electoral register. The register, which is actually 31 separate registers, is inaccurate. Many people renting around the country receive the polling cards of previous tenants who have long moved on. The chief executive of the Electoral Commission, Art O’Leary, said the register could be wrong by half a million people. This issue is decades old. Without accurate data, we cannot properly capture who is actually voting and where.
2. Canvass flats
The second thing is a plan for canvassing flats and apartments. If you are living in a house you are much more likely to be canvassed and therefore much more likely to reflect on who you’re going to vote for on the basis of that interaction. In 2020 in Dublin Central, 46.3 per cent of accommodation consisted of flats and apartments, compared with 11.8 per cent nationally.
In the run-up to the election, I walked around new build-to-rent developments on the north side of Dublin’s docklands. There were no election posters. Not only are these areas not canvassed, the election campaign itself was invisible. With an increasing number of people living in apartments, what are political parties going to do about so few apartment-dwellers being engaged in person during an election campaign?
3. Later deadline
The third thing is to expand the deadline for voter registration up to and including polling day. In 2024, more than 400,000 people registered to vote. Of this number, in November, the month of the election, more than 115,000 people registered to vote. These are big numbers. And yet the deadline to register to vote in the general election was November 12th, almost 2½ weeks before polling day.
On November 6th, Taoiseach Simon Harris announced the Dáil would be dissolved on November 8th. This gave people who had not yet registered four days, a ridiculously short window.
4. Postal votes
The fourth thing is to expand postal voting within Ireland, and for voters who will be outside the country when the election happens. Those who can apply for a postal vote include full-time members of the Defence Forces, Irish diplomats posted abroad and their spouses, voters with a physical disability or illness living at home, and gardaí. There is a four-page application form for those applying for a postal vote if “due to circumstances of your work/service or full-time study in the State, you cannot go to your polling station on polling day”.
If you are filling out this form as an employee, your employer must certify the form. If you are filling it out as a student, the educational institution’s registrar or secretary must certify the form. If you are not an employee or a student – for example, if you are self-employed – then a notary, or commissioner for oaths, or peace commissioner, or practising solicitor must complete part of the form.
This process is archaic. If you are planning to vote in a general election using this process, the latest date for your local authority to receive this application is two days after the date of the dissolution of the Dáil. In the context of the most recent election, considering the Dáil was dissolved on a Friday, how were people meant to get this form into the hands of someone working in their local authority on a Saturday or Sunday?
5. Early voting
The fifth thing is to implement a period of early voting that runs for a week before polling day. How many shift workers, hauliers, healthcare workers, hospital patients and parents who can’t leave the house on polling day due to childcare and so on couldn’t vote? Cairns, the leader of a political party, couldn’t.
We should widen the opportunity for people to vote, not narrow it. Early voting doesn’t necessarily engage voters who are less likely to vote, but it does help those who are likely to vote but face obstacles – planned or unplanned – on polling day.
O’Leary said that 42 per cent of people surveyed who did not vote in the local elections last June said they had no interest in politics. That’s a much bigger issue that needs to be addressed. Youth engagement in particular needs to be increased.
Polling tells us that Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil would not benefit from increased numbers of younger voters. Therefore, other parties need to get busy over the coming years when it comes to increasing engagement. In the meantime, reducing restrictions to voting can improve participation in the democratic process, and a more accurate register will show us how many are really taking part.