Jennifer Horgan: Holly Cairns was silenced on voting day as were so many other patients
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It’s odd what we will accept without questioning.
Holly Cairns was unable to vote last week because she was giving birth. Nobody seemed all that bothered. We smiled to see the postnatal image released on social media — the small little head of her daughter cradled in her arms.
Our acceptance of her lost vote places democracy on shaky ground. We either take voting rights seriously, or we do not. It is either a fact that every vote counts or it is not.
The right to vote is a significant one and it is a right long fought for, by women especially. Irish women clawed their way to full equality in the latter half of the 19th century, first securing full education, then legal independence, and then protection from abusive husbands.
As far back as The Matrimonial Causes Act of 1878, women could obtain a protection order from a magistrates’ court against violent husbands. As we know, that horror is ongoing. 60% of the world’s 85,000 women and girls killed intentionally in 2023 died at the hands of an intimate partner or family member.
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In the context of pregnancy, Women’s Aid recently described the abuse pregnant women endure as “common”, both internationally and in Ireland specifically. For affected women, voting is probably pretty far down on their list of priorities but their right, whether they avail of it or not, still ought to be protected.
Indeed, even within these violent confines, and perhaps motivated by them, women have always fought for equal citizenship. , the newspaper of The Irish Women's Franchise League (IWFL) founded in 1912, ran with the motto: "For Men and Women Equally, The Rights of Citizenship; For Men and Women Equally, The Duties of Citizenship".
For Holly Cairns, and for any other woman giving birth in Ireland last Friday, a biological duty instantaneously erased the duties of citizenship and a fundamental right. Should there not be some facility for these women to vote, some effort to rebalance the duties of motherhood and those of citizenship?
One research study highlights the impact of childbirth and the early stages of child-rearing on women’s electoral participation in Denmark and Finland — strong welfare states both.
“The fact that we find that some women take longer to return to vote indicates that they will take even longer to return to other types of political participation,” the study concludes.
It’s another tiny but not insignificant piece in the puzzle of women’s unequal participation in politics. The biological fact of being a woman is still a block. We need equity before we will achieve equality in Ireland.
This is something recognised by the Social Democrats. In response to my query on the matter, a spokesperson for the party, not wanting to disturb Holly Cairns, said: “This is clearly an area in need of reform. In line with international best practice, proposed changes to the current system should be put forward and be in place ahead of the next election.”
However, the erasure of voting rights on any given day is not specific to pregnant women.
Another person who didn’t get to vote last Friday was John Gaffney from Midleton. I can give you the specifics of the man because I met him while visiting my dad in hospital. He was sitting up in the same ward recovering, and because he hadn’t planned to be in hospital that day, his right to vote, just like Holly Cairn’s right to vote, disappeared.
“My forbears died to give me a vote,” John said from his chair, reading and fully lucid beside his bed. “I keep up with politics and my vote is being ignored. It wouldn’t take that much to arrange a ballot box and two officers to visit hospitals on election day. Otherwise, the State is knowingly denying people like me a basic civil liberty.”
John isn’t alone in his convictions. Beyond Ireland, there are mounting concerns over the obstacles facing would-be, registered, engaged voters due to poor health on the day of an election.
In the US, a non-partisan organisation called Patient Voting aims to increase patient turn-out by organising emergency absentee ballots for people who don’t have enough notice to set up the usual absentee ballot, something we also have here for long-term patients in hospitals and care homes.
States in America have different rules for this emergency, last-minute ballot. What’s most important is that the facility exists. The option is there.
Indeed in 2022 The American Medical Association issued a resolution acknowledging the ability to vote as a social determinant of health and supported efforts to ensure access to ballots. 39 states now have emergency ballot facilities.
In the UK, people can apply for an emergency proxy vote, up to 5pm on the day of the election, so long as they are in a situation they didn’t foresee more than six days before election day.
Emergency proxy votes differ slightly between Britain and Northern Ireland. In Britain, a medical emergency counts. In Northern Ireland, it is offered if their illness developed or deteriorated after the deadline to apply to vote by post or proxy.
In Ireland however, if like my father, or Holly Cairns, or John Gaffney, you end up in hospital without warning, your vote evaporates; your voice is silenced, your citizenship taken. Only long-term patients and people living in nursing homes are facilitated to vote. Short-term patients are overlooked.
In a more general sense, while we all suffered an onslaught of political pamphlets in recent weeks, I saw comparably little information about how to set up a postal vote. As it stands, it is up to individuals, potentially isolated or disabled, to proactively navigate the system.
So, how many votes are we talking about here, if we look only at inpatients on the day? According to the HSE, the majority of inpatient activity is as a result of emergency care.
Their latest data is from August 2023 to July 2024 with a total of 672,982 for the year. A day’s average would be equal to 1,844, they say. However, this only reflects patients who have beds and have been officially admitted. Any Irish person who has spent time in an ED will know that on any given day there are people waiting in seats along corridors, and on trolleys.
Even if we take just the registered number of patients, these numbers are very interesting when you apply them to the recent election race.
Dublin Central’s Gerry ‘The Monk’ Hutch, came alarmingly close to a victory when one in 10 voted for him. He received an impressive 3,098 first preference votes — no small thing. But where did the votes come from?
Well, Hutch understands the truth of the mantra ‘every vote counts’, and so he went old-school. Voter by voter, he encouraged people (up to a thousand people according to Elaine Loughlin of this paper) who weren’t registered, to register and vote for him for the first time.
Going into the final count, Gerry Hutch was 24 votes ahead of Labour’s Marie Sherlock. In the end, only a few hundred votes saved Sherlock. The race tells us one simple truth — small numbers, single votes, can make all the difference.
In Cork’s North Central, the race was even tighter. Eoghan Kenny of Labour was declared as taking the last seat in Cork North Central by just 35 votes against Mick Barry, of People Before Profit Solidarity (PBPS). Barry declared a recount, understandably so, but lost out.
It emerged that during the recount the gap had increased to 39 votes for Kenny. Only 39 votes. My question is this: could they have been found in the corridors of the CUH?