Time to randomise names on polling papers?

Makes sense. The order affected my preferences I overlooked the Labour candidate on the EU ticket and gave them tenth preference instead of third or fourth. After picking a few I just enumerated them in order from the top, excluding the far right candidates.

Mentioned this to my wife and she had done the same in both cases.

Are the truly anonymous though? Could you come up with a system of choosing a particular sequence of low order preferences that would end up identifying the vote? This could enable vote selling and duress voting.

The risk isn't that they'd need to know you. The risk is that they pay you to vote in a particular way, with an unusual pattern of low order preferences for candidates that allows them to uniquely identify your vote. This allows you to confirm that you voted as per instructions, and collect your payment for doing so.

It's a bit of a stretch, and it's hard to create a fraud involving significant numbers of votes, but it would open up that possibility.

Once data is collected and shared, it's very hard to stop it getting into the hands of interested parties.

It's the same rationale as disallowing any vote with any written mark or scribble or doodle on the paper.

Really ?

Lots and lots . ..?

Look at post #63 for two examples.

They are kept for, I think it is six months, just in case there are any challenges in the courts. Then they are destroyed.

Yes exactly as I am !

Maybe @extra-ordinary_ you could include the post in your reply ?

Anything I have read says that Irish voters are pretty intelligent and well versed politically unlike voters elsewhere .

Of course there would always be the odd few eejits in every population ...but not lots

Seen this in reply to gavreilly on twitter

"From one of your pics. After this voter got to no7 they just gave remaining prefs from top to bottom of ballot. Assuming there are many more similar instances. Does Cuffe / Boylan position near the top give them a slight advantage over AOR at this late stage of count?"

https://twitter.com/MichaelConway01/status/1800589950980944361

The large constituencies is a problem IMO.

This is why I have laid out the cons differently that straight forward PR.

Take the last Euro elections for example both FG and FF gained an extra seat, while some parties were under represented.

In round 1 of vote the parties get the same as they did in the current euros, for simplicity I have choose the top 7 vote getter to represent the new cons.

This would mean in Round 1: FF and FG would both get 3 seats and Independents would get 1

As both FF and FG have reached the portion of votes they would not continue in the next round, while indos still have a second seat to get.

In round 2 the independent candidate with the most votes takes their seat (e.g. the new dublin south con has independent on 3000 votes while no other indo in any other con meets that number), independents are now excluded along with the filed con. SF would be entitled to 2 seats and that SF seats would be filled by the SF candidates with the most number of votes. SF are now excluded as are the 2 cons that they sit in,

and then on to > GP 1, II 1, AON 1 and 14c 1. (Potential you'd have to have a quote to avoid a scenario where a candidate with only 400 votes is elected).

The reason: a smaller constituency, allowing people to feel like they have an MEP that represents them, while retaining some bit of PR where PR can't work in a 2 seat con.

Or you could do regional list system.

This is similar to wales but they use a closed list system, and the list is used by region rather then con.

Just an idea, I might be completely and utterly stupid. But I am just putting it out there. Sorry for being stupid. Though happy to take real constructive criticism.

That's not my point. They had to use PR for those elections. It's EU law.

You do realise that in referendums, when you would expect things to be super clear, that an estimated 1-2% of people vote the wrong way?