European Parliament Elections 2024 - Friday, June 7th

As in a week, if not more?

You are comparing things that aren't comparable. The length of time of counting votes being a few days, which is usual for us and not an issue is not comparable to the mess that is the children's hospital.

Multiple seat PR-STV constituencies with dozens of candidates dont lend themselves to fast counting. In a FPTP system you can just pile up the X's for each candidate and send them through a counting machine. But with 3 foot long ballot papers and preference voting even a first count is going to take time with 100's of thousands of votes cast. And when you get to transfers, even matters like how transfers are selected adds time. If you think of a candidate who exceeded the quota by 10,000 you cant just take 10,000 off the top as they might be all from one area. They do in effect take them off the top of the piles but the piles themselves need to be representative.

E-voting trialled in the 2002 GE in a few constituencies actually automated all of this and would probably produce a more accurate result. They worked and worked well, problem being though that security could not be guaranteed, which no system could in truth. What should have happened is that the E-voting machine produce a paper record to the voter, so the voter may verify their intention has been accurately reflected and audit completed comparing a sample of these paper records to actual result to ensure nothing untoward happened.

By definition, it means 2.

We are on day 3 of the count now…

1st count in MNW is expected later on this evening…

Counting only began on Sunday

Saturday was only sorting of ballots into locals and euros. Tallies began then, but not counting

That would be simply incredible if that happened.

MLMD should go, if that transpires.

markodaly quote "We are on day 3 of the count now…"

No we are not. Sorting of the Euro ballot papers only began yesterday and counting began only late yesterday. We haven't had a full day counting yet.

However you are on day three, at least, of complaining about our electoral system. it is the nature of our system that counts will take some time. That is the price we willingly pay for the best electoral system in Europe. The EU Parliament reconvenes in late July, five weeks time I think, so plenty of time to get the count done.

Because tallies give the earliest indication of how things might go

Tallies are not done by election officials - they are done by outside observers, usually political parties.

The count process is it's own standalone process. It does not rely on tallies. Tallies involve people watching votes being separated in count centres and tallying first prefs. It is not an exact science which is why it is not used in count, as ballots can be missed by tallymen as they are only observing not sorting ballots themselves.

Looks like Labour are emerging from a decade and a half of decline and being in the doldrums. Their performance in the Locals and in Dublin has defied all the pundits. Definite signs of green shoots and another cause of concern to Sinn Fein.

Sorting of the Euro ballot papers only began yesterday 

Eh, this started Saturday..

We haven't had a full day counting yet.

No, we had a full day yesterday, and if you include tallying and sorting the ballots from the local election ballots, 2 days.

People getting hung up on semantics.

My wife asked me, why we vote on Fridays, while Europe votes on Sundays. My answer was, a day off for teachers.

But in hindsight, it's because we take so long to sort, tally and count the votes, we need a head start, but we will still be last to finish. ;)

However you are on day three, at least, of complaining about our electoral system.

Nope, never said anything about PR-STV.

My complaint was about the streamlining of the voting process, giving people more options to vote (postal votes, early voting and the like)* and especially the counting afterwards.

*the turnout is well down from 2019, surely we have to look at ways to increase this? Or are you happy with it all the way it is.

 That is the price we willingly pay for the best electoral system in Europe

Best?

Irish exceptionalism at its finest. Can you elaborate on this unprovable claim?

A couple means 2, some want to redefine it as many more than 2

Definately impacted my vote. I would have had my preferred few, 1-4 about, but in the event of those being eliminated / surplus to be distributed, I wanted to ensure that if my vote was to be distributed it might advantage someone who I would see as ok over a few candidates who I wanted nowhere near a seat so I scanned I added a 5-8 on preferences to help make sure my vote might help prevent certain candidates getting in.

They will have been examined, in front of candidates agents, already.

Most spoiled are blank or all options crossed out

Leaving aside your rotten language, amazes me the tolerance for abuse here - Daly could do it but highly, highly unlikely - if she was nearer 30K then yes but Brid Smith has put paid to it, I'd say Wallace could do it, the fact O'Sullivan effectively conceded her seat yesterday is perhaps significant..

they should be examined closely

They will be.

200 votes to the quota isn’t a big increase and it unlikely to swing the output. If it comes down to 200 votes, a candidate may well request a full recount.

Daly is gone IMHO.

She is too far behind both Cuffe and O'Riordan

Wallace is gone too from what I have seen.

Good riddance in kicking out Putin's mouthpeace. A good election result.

What makes you think that the "..many people (who) don't know how the voting system works .." are in the " lower socioeconomic areas" ( wherever they are )

A candidate exceeding quota on first count is the longest scenario for count 2.

You have to look at all number 2s for that candidate, not just the surplus. It's the entire vote, then % from all #2s then % multiplied by the number of surplus votes.

In elections of this scale (Euros) with quotas of 70k odd? It's a massive undertaking.

But so what? It takes another day or two, there's no rusj

Low income areas are more likely to have higher numbers of protest votes also, and spoiled ballots are a type of protest vote