Theresa Reidy: Don't be put off by naysayers who say your vote doesn't count
Your Democratic To Istock Vote It Use On Enduing Sure Share Legacy Ireland's Friday Picture: Countries And Be Powerful Few Matters:
Your vote matters, be sure to use it on Friday. Don’t be put off by naysayers who claim that it doesn’t matter who you vote for, the same people get elected every time.
There have been loads of these assertions over the last three weeks on vox pops, podcasts, radio shows and on social media. Indeed, research from the National Election and Democracy Study in June showed that among those that did not vote, 11% believed ‘my vote doesn’t matter’.
It simply is not true.
The Irish political system is one of the most democratic in the world. It guarantees that a diverse array of political views are represented in the Dáil and that these closely reflect the preferences of voters.
The new Dáil will have 174 seats, an increase of 14 on the outgoing Dáil. Under the Constitution, the size of the Dáil is connected to population figures and the large jump in the population since 2020 brought a related increase in the number of TDs.
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There is also a constitutional requirement that ensures the ratio of TDs to population must be broadly even throughout the country. Whether urban, suburban or rural, there is roughly the same ratio of TDs to constituents. Every vote is equal, in every constituency.
Compare that to the recent presidential election in the US when all attention was focused on ‘swing states’ and their potential to be decisive in shaping the final outcome. There, some voters matter much more than others.
PR-STV is one of the most voter-friendly electoral systems. It gives voters enormous choice. Twice, voters were asked to change the electoral system, and twice they said no in referendums in 1959 and 1968.
Under PR-STV, voters can express a first preference (number 1) for just one candidate, or they can express a preference for a few candidates on the ballot paper (1,2,3,4 ….) or they can express a preference for each candidate on the ballot. Every voter is sovereign, you decide how many, or how few preferences, you want to express.
PR-STV also allows voters to choose across parties, within parties and for non-party or independent candidates. Someone could vote number one for a candidate from party A, then vote number 2 for an independent candidate and then number 3 for a candidate from party B, and so on.
This ability to express preferences across parties and candidates is what makes PR-STV so unique. Most of our European neighbours have list systems which provide much more restricted choices for voters.
And every preference matters. The last count to finish at the June local elections was in Kildare. At one stage, there were just two votes separating the candidates.
Small margins are not unusual, a great many councillors and TDs have been elected with just a handful of votes separating them from their opponent.
It would be great to see the number of TDs elected from each constituency increase because this would make the final outcome of elections even more proportional and fair but even as it currently stands, the electoral system greatly empowers voters.
More than 680 candidates are contesting the election, an increase of at least 150 on the 2020 general election. More women than ever are running.
Voters in Louth will have the widest choice with 24 candidates on the ballot. The new constituency of Wicklow-Wexford has the lowest number at just 10 candidates but this still provides a wide array of parties and independents for voters to choose from.
The number of political parties registering in Ireland has increased sharply in recent years and voters also have a wide array of non-party (independent) candidates on the ballot.
Most European countries do not have any independents in national politics. The parties are spread across the economic ideological spectrum from left to right and there is also good diversity on the social spectrum from conservative to liberal.
And ultimately there will be a lot of new TDs in the next Dáil. Twenty-nine TDs announced that they were retiring from politics before the election. There were a further six resignations in the last year, one due to illness and the other five triggered by the election of TDs to the European Parliament and the appointment of Michael McGrath as Ireland’s new EU commissioner.
They will all be replaced in the election on Friday, 14 new TDs will be elected and a few incumbent TDs, possibly more than a few, will lose their seats. Voters are choosing a new and likely quite different set of TDs.
Some people don’t like the choices that the electorate have made since the foundation of the State, and that’s fair enough, but that doesn’t mean that the system of electing people to Dáil Eireann isn’t fair and effective.
It is. There are few countries around the world that share our powerful and enduing democratic legacy, it is one of the great privileges of being Irish. Use your vote.
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- Dr Theresa Reidy is a political scientist at University College Cork and a co-editor of and .