All Voter registration questions answered here (if we can)

Old_-_School

If you move from one county to another do you send the RFA form to your new County or your old one?

Nevyn

To the new one.

magicbastarder

squirrel6767 wrote:

Dublin City Council
Franchise Section
16/19 Wellington Quay
Dublin 2

you can hand deliver to here no problem - i did so this morning. the garda station stamp was barely visible - "ah, shur that hardly matters much".

The franchise department of Wicklow co co. at county Buildings on the Dublin rd in Wicklow (just on the Rathnew side of Tesco) will be open on saturday from 9am to 5pm to accept forms for entry onto the register.
Yes thats saturday tomorrow-so anyone who is say down this evening or tomorrow and normally in Dublin for college or whatever has a chance to go to their Garda station get the form stamped and hand it in.

LegacyUser

I very much want to vote this year but will be in Australia on the 24th. Is there any way at all I would be eligible for a postal vote? From what I can tell I just won't be able to vote, but thought someone here might have more information.

no unless you change your plans.
The closing date for postal voter registration was last tuesday.

Big Tone

In the Franchise Dept in Cork City Hall (the new building!) they will accept completed RFA2 forms up to 12 midday next Tuesday (this is due to it being a Bank Holiday weekend).

Lister1

Lo all,

I'm going to be out of the Country during the election and dont want my vote to be wasted. Are there provisions made that will facilitate myself and others in this position?

wow sierra

No - there is a postal voting option for people who will be away from home within Ireland, but you have missed the deadline for that anyway.

Your only option is to find a friend who is not bothered about voting and convice them to vote for the candidate of you choice- That might sound daft but there is a huge proportion of the population who don't vote so you might be able to convice someone.
For the Political Parties getting their suporters to actually turn up at the polling booths is as big a problem as convincing them that they are the correct party to vote for!!!

brianthebard

is it possible to check if someone was put on the supplemental register? My sisters had forms filled in and everything for them (against my advice, they should have done it themselves, etc,etc.) but I don't know if it was done in time. How long do you have to wait for the names to be added?

blorg

I'd also be interested in brianthebard's question above - filled in the forms a few weeks ago and posted them off (e.g. should have been plenty of time.) Do we just have to wait and see if polling cards arrive?

brianthebard

brianthebard wrote:

is it possible to check if someone was put on the supplemental register? My sisters had forms filled in and everything for them (against my advice, they should have done it themselves, etc,etc.) but I don't know if it was done in time. How long do you have to wait for the names to be added?

I handed in the form for my sister yesterday and they stamped it received with yesterdays date and added her name to the supplementary register on a pc as I stood there watching.
They told me that the polling cards for those newly added would come out a week later than those already on the register.
There was no receipt given.

jhegarty

Quick question :


Name mispelled on register... .i know should have checked before now, only notice when a few election leaflets came through with incorrect name...


will it be ok (persuming you have voting card) ? or will they go ryanair on you ?


name is two letters off , but makes a different name....

athtrasna

jhegarty wrote:

Quick question :


Name mispelled on register... .i know should have checked before now, only notice when a few election leaflets came through with incorrect name...


will it be ok (persuming you have voting card) ? or will they go ryanair on you ?


name is two letters off , but makes a different name....

Phone them (the council). My sister's name is 5 letters short and her address is wrong but she was told by the council that the register would be annotated and that even though her name was wrong on the polling card, the people in the polling station would know her right name, They think the extra word on the address won't stop the polling card getting to her. Only time will tell on both counts.

Mewzel

i've just found out that i have to go away on the 24th, my flight is early so have to be in the airport by 6am, and won't be back til the saturday. Does anyone know if there is any way at all that i can vote? or am i just stuck?

athtrasna

Mewzel wrote:

i've just found out that i have to go away on the 24th, my flight is early so have to be in the airport by 6am, and won't be back til the saturday. Does anyone know if there is any way at all that i can vote? or am i just stuck?

Nope - you'll miss your chance I'm afraid.

JackieO

I applied for a postal vote on the basis that I'm going to be abroad on business the entire week of the election - does this mean I will not be entitled to the postal vote? I wasn't until now aware that there was a restriction on being within Ireland to obtain the postal vote (otherwise I would have amended by postal application for appropriately).

Threads merged

vector

How many people here have two votes?

athtrasna

It's still illegal to vote more than once though.

naturalglow

Hi,

Excuse me for sounding dumb with this post. Could someone explain if there are, for example, five seats up for grabs in an electoral region but a party is only running 3 candidates do you just vote 1, 2, 3 and that's it or can you vote 1, 2, 3 for your candidates and then pick two others from different parties or does this constitute a spoilt vote? Can't find anything on this anywhere?

Thanks


B

cast_iron

Yes, you can vote any way you like. The party they belong to is irrelevant.

blorg

In our system (proportional representation by single transferrable vote) you vote for the candidate, not the party. So you can vote 1,2,3,... for candidates in whatever order you wish (e.g. you are perfectly free to vote Joe Bloggs (FG) No. 1, Jim Murphy (FF) No. 2, Mary Delaney (FG) No. 3.)

jjbrien

I put in my forms 7 weeks ago for the supplemental register but still have not had any word from Dublin City Council? Did anybody get anything yet? Done checktheregister.ie and Im not there either?

Miss Judy

Guys, we just moved into our new house but still living in the same county. We were registered to vote at our previous address which we were renting and have no access to now so it's most likely our polling cards are there?.

I always vote and would be very dissapointed if I can't due to moving house. We just moved out of one town and to another one 30 minutes away in the same county and the same candidates.

Does anyone know what we can do about this?. I rang Wicklow Co Co and still no form arrived in the post.

Thanks in advance.

vector

Is it possible to use my single transferable vote on all candidates?
Lets say its a 3 seater, with 50 candidates

Of course I know who is getting 1,2,3, but can I continue up to 50 or does the form only have as many boxes as there are seats

brianthebard

jjbrien wrote:

I put in my forms 7 weeks ago for the supplemental register but still have not had any word from Dublin City Council? Did anybody get anything yet? Done checktheregister.ie and Im not there either?

You should be, my sisters did the same thing, but later than you and are on it now. Are you sure the address you put in and the address you registered under are the same? Just a thought because apart from something like that being wrong I would ring the city council asap.

vector

vector wrote:

Is it possible to use my single transferable vote on all candidates?
Lets say its a 3 seater, with 50 candidates

Of course I know who is getting 1,2,3, but can I continue up to 50 or does the form only have as many boxes as there are seats

yes of course.
You can use your vote 123456789,10,11,12,13, etc right to the end of the ballot.

Now what happens to your vote depends on who you vote for.

For example if your first preference candidate ends up taking the 4th seat in say a 4 seater, your vote will have been counted once and it will stay in his/her pile.Your other preferences will be ignored untill your candidate is elected.
Your 2nd preference may be counted if there is a 5th seat to be filled.

If you vote no1 for a candidate that is unlikely to be elected then your vote is added to whoever you voted no 2 when your no 1 candidate is eliminated.
If your no 2 candidate is eliminated and they are still filling seats then your no 3 will be used when your no 2 candidate is eliminated.

So in our voting situation a vote for a small candidate is not wasted as long as you give your no 2 and 3 and 4 etc to others.
Your vote will still come into play for them unless say your no 2 preference has been elected-in which case afaik it's non transferable.

My best advice to voters is to vote 1 2 and 3 or 4 in order of the candidates they most want elected and then use the other numbers to vote for the rest in order of the candidate you dont want elected last (ie if there are 16 on the list give them no 16 etc)

The other thing to think about is tactical voting.
Maybe you think that the person you want elected will have a big vote and will get in on the first count.
If you think that, then you would be aswell to vote no 1 for the weakest of the candidates that you would most like to get in.

vector

thanks Tristrame

Your Man

Does anyone know when you get your polling card if your on the supplementary register? I registered a week before the final day and have had o correspondance from the council as to whether im on it

it's all computerised so just ring the franchise section of your local co co and they will tell you if you were sucessfully added.
If you are on it and don't have a polling card ,just bring id with you to the polling station and you will be fine.

Some who were added at the last minute to the supplimentary may get their cards later than those already on it.

bget

Can you tell me why the deadline for applying to vote by post came around so quickly. I'm a student teacher and will be in the middle of my finals for the election and resent the fact that i cant have a say in who will be running the country for teh next five years. By the time i had found out how to apply to vote by post the deadline was gone by. People were only given two days.

I can't answer that,it has nothing to do with me

It is unfortunate.
That said, it's not as if we didnt know for the last 6 months or more that there would be an election round about now-so it's like all things left to the last minute-sometimes you lose out and you yourself could easily have investigated this in time to be honest.

Incidently there absolutely had to be a closing date for postal voting within a workable timeframe from the election.

brianthebard

I think that's a bit unfair Tristrame, while we knew there was an election coming we didn't know if we needed a postal vote or not. People could be forgiven for thinking the Taoiseach might try to be as inclusive as possible but that didn't happen.

bacon&cabbage

Your Man wrote:

Does anyone know when you get your polling card if your on the supplementary register? I registered a week before the final day and have had o correspondance from the council as to whether im on it

I got my form in on the final day before the deadline for the supplementary register and I got my polling card today

naturalglow

blorg wrote:

In our system (proportional representation by single transferrable vote) you vote for the candidate, not the party. So you can vote 1,2,3,... for candidates in whatever order you wish (e.g. you are perfectly free to vote Joe Bloggs (FG) No. 1, Jim Murphy (FF) No. 2, Mary Delaney (FG) No. 3.)

Thanks very much - makes more sense now!

One last thing. If Single Transferable Vote is supposed to cut down on spoilt votes what else constitutes a spoilt vote??

blorg

naturalglow wrote:

Thanks very much - makes more sense now!

One last thing. If Single Transferable Vote is supposed to cut down on spoilt votes what else constitutes a spoilt vote??

STV has nothing to do with cutting down on spoilt votes (invalid votes) as such but rather does have the effect that you can vote for whoever you like without feeling that you have cast a "wasted vote" as if your candidate is eliminated your vote transfers to your next preference. By contrast in a first past the post system (like in the UK) there is a strong disincentive to vote for any candidate who is not perceived to have a hope of election, as you will thus "waste your vote" and lack an input into the outcome of the election. This gives rise to distortions and [url=
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plurality_voting_system#Tactical_voting]tactical voting[/url], where people may not vote for the candidate that they most would like, but the most palatable candidate who also has a chance of winning.

Actually spoilt votes would include an empty ballot paper, marking the same preference against more than one candidate, write-ins, etc. etc. It can be accidental or deliberate (as a form of protest.)

the1

is an age card okay identification?

danteXXI

I thought I was on the register but aftrer checking it today I can't find my name on it. Is it too late to register?

cast_iron

the1 wrote:

is an age card okay identification?

Yes

danteXXI wrote:

I thought I was on the register but aftrer checking it today I can't find my name on it. Is it too late to register?

Yes, but ring your local authority and check with them directly.

danteXXI

Can I not register online at all?

blorg

danteXXI wrote:

Can I not register online at all?

No, it is too late to register. You can't register online in any case, you can only download the forms. You can _check_ if you are on the register online at www.checktheregister.ie but this does not AFAIK cover the supplement.

MLM

I first registered to vote before the 2002 election when I lived in Cork. I have since moved to Dublin but did not re-register as I was under the impression that I could still vote in Cork, and was under the impression that once you registered you would not have to do it again. Today I discovered that I am no longer on the register. For future reference, is it necessary to register for every election, and do you have to re-register every time you move to a new local authority area?

probably the reason you are not on the cork register anymore is because of the review of the register done a few months ago.
Who ever visited where you were registered would have been told you no longer live there.

MLM

Registered at my parent's house, although I wasn't living there at the time I thought it would be more convenient as I was renting and tended to move on every year or so. I'll check with them, thanks for the info.

dereko1969

if you're not on the online version of the register - please ring your county council. i checked for my sister a few weeks ago and she was on it, today when no polling card had arrived for her i checked again to see where she should vote and she wasn't there anymore! rang fingal who within a few seconds were able to tell me she was on register and where to vote, was so grateful that i forgot to query how come she'd come off the online version!
if you can vote do so for whichever party/candidate - just vote!

lafors

Well I went and voted on the way home from work this morning with no problems.

I got a call from my mother about an hour ago telling me that she, my dad, and my gran (who lives with them), were not on the register!

They have all been living at the same address for nearly 15 years now and have always voted. My Gran who is 82 has never missed her and is very annoyed to say the least.

Does anyone know how this can happen....that they are suddenly removed from the register, and is it too late to do anything about it??

diarmuidh

Well I went and voted on the way home from work this morning with no problems.

I got a call from my mother about an hour ago telling me that she, my dad, and my gran (who lives with them), were not on the register!

They have all been living at the same address for nearly 15 years now and have always voted. My Gran who is 82 has never missed her and is very annoyed to say the least.

Does anyone know how this can happen....that they are suddenly removed from the register, and is it too late to do anything about it??



Is there anyway to find out who took their names off and the criteria they used for doing so???

I think this is a really important question as we dont want to head the way of certain US states where Republican supporters went around ticking off African-American voters they thought wouldnt be sympathetic to them!!!

Wisheress

Hello. Can anyone help me on this? I registered to vote on the supplementary register and sent my application in by registered post well before the deadline (went through the usual hassle of getting it stamped at Garda station etc).

Some time later I realised I didn't have a polling card. I rang the county council (outside Dublin) and they said they had never received my application and that I must have sent it in late / forgotten to send it! How insulting!

I then contacted An Post who kindly tracked my application and were able to provide written proof that they had delivered it to the county council well before the deadline. I gave the council this info and they then admitted that they had actually lost my application. They told me that without question, even though it was entirely their fault, that I could not vote.

I was gutted by this. I was hugely interested in voting in this election, had researched the candidates and let alone that, it's a citizen's right, the cornerstone of a democracy. I wonder how many other people it happened to?

My local TD was not able to help, and the county council needless to say were not very forthcoming. Is there an official body I can lodge a complaint with?

Many thanks.

W

Our man in Havana

diarmuidh wrote:

Well I went and voted on the way home from work this morning with no problems.

I got a call from my mother about an hour ago telling me that she, my dad, and my gran (who lives with them), were not on the register!

They have all been living at the same address for nearly 15 years now and have always voted. My Gran who is 82 has never missed her and is very annoyed to say the least.

Does anyone know how this can happen....that they are suddenly removed from the register, and is it too late to do anything about it??



Is there anyway to find out who took their names off and the criteria they used for doing so???

I think this is a really important question as we dont want to head the way of certain US states where Republican supporters went around ticking off African-American voters they thought wouldnt be sympathetic to them!!!

In Laois/Offaly hundreds were simply removed from the register simply because they were not home when election register officials called. That was the only criteria used to remove them. The first they knew of this was when a letter arrived advising that they were removed.

Anyone that protested was required to appear before a special sitting of the circuit court in order to get back on the register. I was one of these few hundred. The judge was not impressed with the attitude of the election officials. Anyways everyone that applied were reinstated onto the register.