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Friday, February 14, 2020

problems with the irish electoral system

The main problem with the Irish electoral system (styled proportional representation) is that there is not one person in a thousand in Ireland who understands it.
A system of elections which the electors do not comprehend is itself an undermining of our democracy.
Votes in Ireland consist of a range of preferences which are not just counted, they are interpreted, and then reassigned, and then reinterpreted. The system is fraught with opportunities for falsification. There is no absolute consistency in the process.
Should a candidate wish to challenge a result, an accurate, ie consistent, recount is impossible.
Here's an overview of the shenanigans that is proportional representation in Ireland.
There are several seats to be filled in each constituency, sometimes three, sometimes four, sometimes five.
Any number of candidates may stand in a constituency.
Voters choose from the candidates in order of their preference, 1, 2. 3, 4, 5, and so on.
Voters write the number of their choice in a space on the ballot paper beside a photograph of the candidate and the candidate's name.
They can choose to register a preference for only one candidate.
Or they can write a sequential preference beside several.
Or beside all.
Candidates reaching a certain number of votes, the required quota, are deemed elected.
Quotas are calculated through a form of voodoo, ie by taking the total number of people who voted in a constituency, dividing that number by one more than the number of seats due to be filled in the constituency, and adding one to the answer.
The counting officer then throws a dead cat over his shoulder in a graveyard at midnight, picks a number between five thousand and fifteen thousand, chants eenie meenie minie mo over it, and that's the quota.
The above two paragraphs contain one strictly accurate summation of the method for calculating quotas and one bit of fooboon.
Can you tell which is the genuine way to establish a quota in an Irish election?
Neither can most Irish people.
As the votes are counted, immense opportunities arise for fraud.
Count staff can fill in numbers beside candidates whose boxes have been left blank.
Count staff can change numbers beside candidates they like or don't like.
Count staff can deliberately spoil legitimate votes by writing or scribbling on ballot papers or by destroying them.
Ballot stuffing is also possible as per the Cosa Nostra mafia and elements of the Democratic Party's favoured method in parts of the United States.
In Ireland when the first count is completed, if a candidate has surpassed the quota, he may have a surplus, which is the number of votes he has received above the quota.
His surplus votes are then distributed to other candidates, according to the number 2's on them.
There is no consistent method for establishing which ballots to designate as the surplus votes and which to leave in the main pile as the votes that helped the candidate reach the surplus.
A wily decision by count staff at this stage can aid particular candidates.
For instance by deeming the surplus to be those votes taken in a particular region, perhaps a working class area, or another candidate's home town, a manipulation of the transfers of the number 2 votes becomes feasible.
Candidates are also eliminated when there is no longer a perceived mathematical possibility that they could be elected by any transfer permutation.
The sequential votes of these candidates are also transferred.
Vast errors in the interpretation of number 3, number 4, number 5 etc etc, votes can occur.
In some situations of recounts, the appropriate sequential voter choice number to transfer, is eminently debatable.
Fianna Fail overturned the election of a Handicapped People's Rights campaigner a decade ago by bringing in high powered lawyers to debate with count staff over transfers as they were doing the recount.
After the recount the seat was reassigned to Fianna Fail by a handful of votes.
The lawyers didn't need to steal more than a handful.
The issue with recounts in Ireland is that under proportional representation, no consistent result is possible or likely.
Accurate recounts, where the surplusses are consistently taken from the same pile of votes and other votes are consistently left inert, are not possible.
Recounts are rare and when they happen. the man with the best lawyers hassling the count staff generally wins.
We should change the electoral system in Ireland, to a one man one vote system.
If we decide to retain multi seat constituencies, we should still simply count the votes once, with no second, third, fourth, fifth etc etc preferences, with no transfers, and with no recounts, and award the seats after the first and only count.
The top three candidates, or top four, or top five, would win the seats after that one count.
The time wasting voodoo of proportional representation is fragmenting the polis.
Its arcane complexity is a breeding ground for fraud and is delivering Ireland into the hands of mobsters.
Last word to newly elected parliamentarian for Waterford, David Cullinane of Sinn Fein: "Up the Republic. Up the Rah. Tiocfaidh ar la."

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