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I often get the timing of current affairs articles wrong. A year ago, I wrote an extensive piece on the Irish voting register and local elections. That piece is probably more topical and useful now than when I first sat down to look into the 2024 local elections and the Irish voting register.
For a year, I’ve kept an eye on the many Ukrainian telegram channels that’ve popped up in Ireland. Almost immediately, I noticed how the administrators of these groups encouraged our recent arrivals to register to vote. Evidence of this below. It seems to be a co-ordinated effort across groups, I would say. I would also note it is completely legitimate and legal for them to do so.
In a nutshell, refugees and asylum seekers are eligible to vote in local elections once a short period of time has elapsed. As can almost all people with a valid work-visa residing in the state. This is nothing new and has always been the case in Ireland in recent decades, but the feature of this election, is the probable co-ordination and marshalling of some of these new voting blocs.
Recent Gov.ie statistics show 31,000 new company-sponsored, non EU work visas were issued in 2023 alone ( see below ). The combined potential electorate of non-EU work visa holders, asylum seekers and Ukrainian refugees has the potential to number in the hundreds of thousands. A powerful potential bloc. As an aside, and personally speaking, the abuse of the work visa system is as big a scandal as the mass immigration of Non EU nationals into the country over the last couple of years.
While, I foresee that the main political parties will get hammered in the local elections, I also expect hard-left parties to possibly do better than one might expect. As I believe they are making a definite play for this particular new voting block. I’m thinking People before Profit, Sinn Fein and the Social Democrats as beneficiaries, in this regard.
2023 Employment permit statistics
Link to Gov.ie stats here
One of the oddities of our vote register is that although checktheregister.ie is the new method for registering to vote and for updating existing voter details it does not actually store the nationality of new voters. Eventhough nationality is recorded by them when people register on the website. A freedom of information request revealed this anomaly. Although, the new system seems simple what is going on underneath the hood is anything but. In short, Nationality statistics are not possible to obtain for voters in each local area electoral district: Nationalities recorded at the front-end on Check The Register are translated into one of the following categories for storage on the back-end.
Irish Citizen,
UK Citizen,
UK also EU Citizen,
EU Citizen,
Non-EU citizen,
Potential EU Citizen.
Transcript of FOI response below
Gerry, a Chara,
You are correct that people enter their nationality on the form on checktheregister.ie
When the local authority receives the information from ChecktheRegister, staff use this information to update the local authority register which is hosted on a system called iReg.
Nationality is entered in iReg as Electoral Status e.g. if I entered I am Irish on the form, this is entered as eligible to vote in a Presidential election.
Nationality itself is not recorded in iReg, other than for Irish or UK Citizens – recorded as eligible to vote in Presidential Elections for a person of Irish nationality, and Dáil Elections for a person of UK nationality.
Please see below the Electoral Status categories that can be selected.
It is not possible to give a breakdown of the nationality of voters beyond this, as given the volume of forms, it would not be possible to review them all to create a new record recording nationality for a media query.
In addition, for those on the register for a long time, their original form might be 20 years old, so no longer available.
In line with data retention policies relating to this type of data, ‘newer’ forms are also destroyed after the appropriate time.
With the local elections now zooming into focus I am re-publishing the April 2023 article in full for background to run alongside this piece. I’ve opened a couple of new FOI requests to get updated figures but a refresher and summary is no harm at this point, to remind ourselves of what is going on. While, the huge NO-NO referenda result is welcome - the local elections are a different ball-game. In fact, its fair to say a different electorate too. As you will see below.
Original April 2023 article below.
Now with all the house-keeping out of the way, I want to talk about a topic that is piquing my interest at present and the matter relates to the Irish voting register. A couple of weeks ago, I opened a Freedom of Information request with Check The Register, the body that handles new voting applicants and who are responsible for updating the details of existing registered voters . Some preliminary responses to my enquiries are in and today I’ll begin to lay-out some of the initial findings.
In October of 2022, the government made changes to the method of registering to vote. Modernized is probably the marketing buzz word. All new applicants can now register on-line and this was followed with a marketing campaign encouraging people to register to vote utilizing the new system. My specific focus and interest here is with regard to the local council elections as almost anyone residing in the country can vote in these election. My initial surprise with the system is that you no longer need to present Photo ID of yourself at a Garda Station in the first or last instance of the process. The system whereby a new voter obtains a stamped form to register to vote for that very first voting exercise. Everything now is available to complete on-line but no photo ID is required as part of that process. New registrants only require a PPS number, email address & a physical address. If you cannot provide a physical address there is an additional option that takes care of this scenario as you will see below. Your identity, in other words, is confirmed by PPS number and date of birth.
My Freedom of Information request was responded to in a very timely fashion. In fact, I received a phone-call from a principal officer in Check The Register on the matter, and, to be fair, she was most helpful in providing information. Each PPS number is supposed to be checked against the Social Welfare Register for fraud, problems, wrong info etc. The woman could not definitively say that this was being done in every instance though. The information collected by Check The Register (i.e. the form above) is then distributed to each individual local electoral area county or city council. Suffice to say, though, as long as you have a PPS number you are entitled to vote in Irish local elections. A couple of weeks ago, I performed a test of this system and I wasn’t bowled over with the initial results. A Polish woman I am friend’s with on Facebook but who moved back home to Poland two years ago was able to register to vote using her sister’s home address & Eircode and her own PPS number and to date hasn’t received any red-flags from the system into her inbox from her local (Irish) authority.
More concerning is that Check The Register, cannot provide information split by nationality groupings eventhough they record the information on the site, as you can see above. The data is stored only in digital form-format and sent directly to the relevant local authority and according to Check The Register is not actually stored in a database by them. To obtain voter details broken down by nationality I need to go to each individual county council area and separately ask for that information. I have started the exercise on a number of sample county council areas but will need time to gather and collate the information as it comes to light. But as you can imagine all of this is more time consuming than it need be by our modernized voting register. What I can reveal is that by the end of March approximately 29,000 new applicants to vote have registered via the Check the Register site since the new system was launched in October and another 32,000 have updated their existing details.
Good afternoon Gerry,
I refer to your recent query and your conversation with XXXX on Friday.
Following the enactment of The Electoral Reform Act 2022 an updated checktheregister.ie site was launched on 13 October 2022 allowing people to make an application to submit online applications to register for the first time or update their existing details. An awareness campaign began in early November to raise awareness of these changes. The site works as a portal - applications submitted on checktheregister.ie are processed by the relevant local authority. Checktheregister.ie does not draw personal data from forms submitted so the reports available are limited.
Figures for the rate of applications received through the website per local authority are available and may be of assistance to you. In the period between 13 October 2022 and 27 March 2023, local authorities have collectively received over 32,000 applications requesting the updating of an electors existing details. For the same period, local authorities have received collectively 29,000 applications for new registrations to the register and 32,000 have updated their voting details.
One of the interesting data points to note is the numbers of people registered to vote in local elections vis-a-vis all the other types of election in Ireland. Approximately, between 150,000 and 190,000 more people are registered to vote in our local elections at present than any of the other type of election in Ireland. Obviously, these other election types have more stringent voting requirements.
At the moment….that is………
Why am I interested in this data?
I suppose, I’m interested in this information for the simple reason I want to find out if Ukrainians are starting to register to vote in Ireland’s local elections which take place next year. Now, this isn’t some idle curiosity about one particular country on a whim. I stumbled across a Ukrainian Telegram Group (600+ members) in Galway recently and found a video where the administrators of the group were actively encouraging people to register to vote in Ireland’s local elections. You can see below a clip I found from the telegram group encouraging Ukrainians to register to vote. Of all the very real problems facing Ukrainian refugees I wouldn’t have thought voting in Ireland would be high on their list of priorities but I guess it in someway is. Or perhaps, it is for the groups of people responsible for organising them in this country.
I must state too they are perfectly entitled to register to vote as the legal framework of our country allows for it. To my mind, the Ukrainian diaspora, freshly arrived on our shores, are the most interesting group of immigrant people we have ever welcomed to our nation, for many reasons, but today I only want to focus on a couple. No other country’s people have visited this country in such numbers - all at the same time - before. They will quickly have the potential to become a potent political and voting block. And no other nation has been given immediate and direct access to our housing and social welfare system. Psychologically, it will be very interesting to observe what happens to their attitude of the host country if those taps are ever switched off. Indeed, how welcoming will the virtue-signalling millionaire hoteliers and accommodation providers be once the government money taps are closed off at the water mains?
What I am beginning to understand regarding the Ukrainian refugees is that they are also highly organised and building networks. Again, I have no real problem with this concept other than it should act as a reminder to us all ( Irish and other nationality blocks here) that we should be as organised, networked and activated ourselves.
Now, I don’t want to race down the conspiracy avenue here, believe me, I’ve heard them all at this stage. But ask yourself these questions:
Are the Polish diaspora producing content, such as the above, for distribution around the country?
Are the Georgians doing it?
Are the Irish doing it?!
The answer is probably not to the same co-ordinated degree. Another pertinent question is:
Do you know what your voting and other civil rights are?
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O hate politics now and Politicians, I hate them with a venom since they began lying and broke the bubble in which I was living happily as I began my retirement. I swore I would never vote again. Nevertheless I went out and voted no, no in the Referendums. Here's the comment I wrote on Stephen Delaney's bit earlier so it will save me writing:
"So you still have faith in the Irish Political system Stephen? That it can become again what we always thought it was? No says I, it's broken beyond repair. They ruined it when they lied about a virus in 2020 and went with the Globalist Agenda 21 (which was signed up to behind our backs in 1992). And they haven't stopped lying since"
So I don't know. I'm sad when I think of what these aweful politicians with their shiny suits (as JW might say) have done to our little island. Why should recently arrived foreigners have the right to vote on anything. They should be here temporarily with a hope of returning to their own country soon. Why help them settle in and grow their networks. We don't want them here crowding us and using our rights. I suppose ye think I'm mean now
The only way the Ukrainians or Indians or Africans will manage to save the bacon of FF, FG , SF and the rest is if the vast majority of Irish people dont vote. We have set the example in the referendum last Friday where we gave the political establishment a Mike Tyson style box in the mouth. We need to give the knock out blows in the local, euro and general elections coming up. And hopefully that will involve Varadker, Martin & McDonald lying flat out at the count centre. When I voted last Friday , an old man was in front a me with walking stick and I'd say it took him a good 5 mins to walk up the short school corridor. I'd say he was in his eighties. He made it to the ballot box. Thats the spirit u need.