Is there any party or person worth voting for in modern-day Irish politics?

" First he'd point out that in casting your vote, you honour the dead generations that went before you, most likely your grand parents or great grand parents at this stag, who thought your right to express your opinion on how the country is governed was so precious that they were willing to pay the ultimate price to win you the right to do so. And in his case he saw his best friend shot dead during an ambush of the Border Regiment."

The likes of Collins etc are the absolute other end of the spectrum compared to the sell out weak weasels we can choose to elect... compare national heroes Collins to varadkar etc , literally extremes...

There will be a huge increase in vote spoiling this election. Short of starting a new party, its the only tool left... this might spur ssome new parties into action. All of the current lot are literally identical, they offer no proper differentiation...

Taking defence alone, getting to NATO expenditure level would be several billion a year. (even more in the first few years, because we are starting from practically zero in terms of equipment and facilities)

Lol indeed.

Yawn

Cliched old rubbish

Varadkar barely got in the last time. His constituency going out and making sure he doesn't get elected, same with mm might be a useful tool to get them to make progress on issues rather than regress. People here may shout down my solutions, what's yours? More of the same shite?

A whole lot of the top FG and FF TD's only made past the post on count 5 or 6 in the last GE. Guys that would have been expected to top the poll.

So it would seem, voters are using their votes smarter,, and TD's voters thought were worth a vote, topped the polls. In the next GE, expect poll toppers to bring a running mate with them.

Your bang on,, a lot of FG and FF TD's had running mates, in most constituencies if not all. And many of them only scraped through.

I don't think any SF TD's had a running mate, in fact, I can't think of any constituency that had more than 2 SF candidates, off the top of my head.

But if FG and FF have been doing it for years,, Maybe others might give it a go at the next GE.

I don't think any SF TD's had a running mate, in fact, I can't think of any constituency that had more than 2 SF candidates, off the top of my head.

But most constituencies had a main FF or FG runner, plus a running mate, and it seemed to do them no harm in most cases ..

The indicator of disengagement with politics is not spoiled votes; it's turnout. People who care enough about political issues to be angry will find someone they can vote for; there is no shortage of protest candidates. And they will realise the nihilism involved in caring about political issues but refusing to exercise the political power they have as voters.

Donegal, Cavan-Monaghan, Dublin Midwest, Louth, all elected two SF TDs in 2020

In other words willing to vote for any local gobdaw who promises to 'fix the road'?

We really do get the parliamentarians we deserve...

All this does is to devalue your vote — your one vote, Sam — by reducing the value of your transfers. It reduces the power of voters and enhances that of established parties, in order to raise barriers to less established parties. This is, in a small way, the same defect as characterises FPTP. It's a lousy idea.

It's not true to say that your proposal will speed the count without affecting the result. If you eliminate a candidate on the first count, then obviously the second and subsequent counts will unfold differently. It may not make any difference to the eventual result. On the other hand, it may. And indeed that seems to be your intention; you express concern about "Gobdaws usually squeak[ing] in towards the end of the count on third, fourth or lower preferences"; your concern is the ones who get elected, not the ones who get eliminated.

Your proposal is that first preference votes should have greater value than second or subsequent preference votes (because in your system first preference votes are effective to keep candidates in the race while second, etc, preference votes are not). But you don't achieve this by giving first preferences a greater value than they currently have. Rather, you give lower preferences a lower value than they currently have. So, yeah, you are diminishing the value of the vote.

The whole point of the STV system is to accord as nearly as possible equal value to each voter's vote throughout the process. Under the current rules, you have one vote, it will count for only one candidate, and it will have the same value for that candidate regardless of whether your effective preference is your first, your tenth, or any other preference. You're attacking that principle by giving diminished value to second and subsequent preferences.

Under the present system if, at the last count, Olé F'tang F'tang Biscuit-Barrel from the Monster Raving Loony Party beats Mr Sober Serious from the Serious & Sober Party for the last seat, that is because more voters prefer Olé to Sober than the other way around. You're trying to rig the system so that the preferences of voters as between those two candidates are disregarded and Sober gets the seat, despite the fact that a majority of voters prefer Olé.

This already happens. Two or more candidates with negligible numbers of votes can be eliminated in a single count.

Imagine a hypothetical election where, after the first count, nobody has yet reached the quota (so we don't have to complicate our example by worrying about the distribution of surpluses) and the bottom of the table looks like this:

. . . [Eight candidates with respectable numbers of votes]

Candidate 9: 1,000

Candidate 10: 500

Candidate 11: 200

Candidate 12: 50.

Clearly, distributing candidate 12's votes, even if they all go to candidate 11, cannot put candidate 11 ahead of candidate 10. If no candidate at the top of the poll is within 50 votes of the quota, distributing candidate 12's votes also cannot elect anybody and so produce a surplus for distribution. So if, after count 1, we just distribute candidate 12's votes, then it is inevitable that after count 2 we will be distributing candidate 11's votes; nobody will have exceeded the quota, and candidate 11 will be at the bottom of the poll. Nothing is served by deferring the inevitable elimination of candidate 11 so, in this circumstance, the returning officer will eliminate both candidate 11 and candidate 12 after count 1, and count 2 will consist of the distribution of 250 votes, not 50 votes.

But hold on! By exactly the same reasoning, distributing the votes of both candidate 11 and candidate 12 cannot possibly put candidate 10 ahead of candidate 9. If it also cannot elect anyone - i.e. if no-one is within 250 votes of the quota - then we can eliminate candidates 10, 11 and 12 after count 1, and distribute all their 750 votes in count 2.

And so on. You can assemble as many low-polling candidates as you like until you have a block of votes large enough to elect someone, or to make a material difference to the running order of the remaining candidates, and you can eliminate them all in a single count.

Tl;dr: The returning officer can - and does - eliminate a group of candidates in one count where it is mathematically impossible for this to produce a different election outcome than eliminating them singly in successive counts.

The key point is that the threshold for being "group-eliminated" in this way is not failing to reach some fixed percentage of the quota or some fixed number of votes chosen because it's reckoned that, in most cases, it's probably not going to affect the eventual outcome. It's having less than the minimum number of votes that, in the particular case, is mathematically capable of affecting the eventual outcome.

The Dail isn't supposed to be a glorified county council, that's why

Like so many other democratic countries around the world our main political parties are now pretty much indiscernible from each other, even SF, hence the apathy most now have towards the political system: they've pushed so much to please everyone they're pleasing no-one.

It's leading to the rise in popularity of those with a more radical outlook (both sides of the centre), it won't be long before we start seeing more and more far right/left political figures and the trouble they bring.

So, yeah, there's not a single party I want to vote for in the next election, yet indies are trouble in themselves (even the best intentioned) - we need the return of the monster raving party to at least open a protest vote release.

Totally agree. Our system has its flaws no question about it. For instance we have still not really dealt with the Seanad. We didn't abolish it but its just sitting there clearly needing major reform. But as much as our system has its flaws overall all our PR voting system is vastly ahead of and better then the first past the post they use say in the US and is overall pretty good. I know I will certainly be voting when it comes time for the next election.

We also have 'socialists' who scream blue murder against any form of property tax (and even, in some cases, wealth tax)