Dublin European Election candidate Niall Boylan asked an interesting question on his daily podcast yesterday: Should Irish people living abroad be allowed to vote in Irish elections?
This is not a new question, it should be said: Many countries allow their expats to vote in elections, and in Ireland alone the embassies of France and Australia and Poland are amongst those that facilitate voting in their national elections for people living in Ireland who want to cast a ballot back home.
In recent years, there’s been talk of allowing “the diaspora” to vote in Irish presidential elections, with most of those in favour making the point that it would be relatively easy to organise. It would.
It would also be a terrible idea.
One of the basic principles of ensuring good decision making and accountability in any organisation, whether it be a country or a company or a local GAA club, is that those who make the decisions or the rules should also have to live with those decisions or rules. Fewer stories are more likely to make the news and get thousands of clicks or comments than the old chestnut of the politician failing to follow the rules he has set for others – think here of Boris Johnson during Covid 19, or Charlie Haughey telling us all to tighten our belts.
The same should apply to voting. I for one shall be voting on June 7th for candidates in the local and European elections. Later this year or very early in 2025, I will vote in the General Election to choose our next Government. Whatever decision the Irish people make in those elections, my wife and I will have to live with the consequences. If the electorate votes for higher taxes on our income bracket, we will have to pay them. If the electorate votes for parties that wish to ban cars, we shall have to invest in some horses. And so on.
This simply is not true of an Irish person living in New York. Or in Sydney.
Giving the power to shape the country’s future to people who do not have to live in that future would not only be grossly unfair, but a potentially catastrophic error. To cite the example above, it is very easy to vote for higher taxes when you do not have to pay those taxes yourself.
The United States, of all countries, handles this fairly well: US Citizens living overseas are entitled to vote in US elections, but they are also expected to pay US federal taxes. The policy works so that in essence, US citizens living in Ireland pay Irish taxes, and then if there’s a gap between what they paid in Ireland and what they would have paid at home, the difference is supposed to go right back to the US Government, from their accounts.
In practice, because Irish taxes are generally higher than most US taxes, most of them pay nothing. But many US expats do end up paying tax to Uncle Sam, depending on where they live.
For Ireland, of course, this might be a tremendous source of income: Imagine if we could tax all the Irish people working in Australia or New York, in return for giving them the vote at home. That might be a good deal.
It also, suddenly, probably doesn’t sound like a good deal to Irish expats living overseas.
But this is at the heart of the issue: The famous slogan of the American revolutionaries who kicked off that country’s war of independence was “No taxation without representation”. In truth, that slogan can be easily reversed, because the logic of it works both ways: No representation without taxation. After all, even the poorest people living here pay taxes – VAT is a tax on everything they purchase.
Some emigrants, of course, will argue that such a harsh line is unfair on them. What if you happen to be an Irish person living here who just so happens to be posted overseas because of your job for a few months when an election is happening? Shouldn’t your vote be facilitated?
This is, of course, something the Government facilitates for its own employees: Irish diplomatic staff and military personnel living overseas on national duty are permitted to vote, theirs being the only exception to the “you must live here” rule. One might argue that it’s unfair that an embassy employee in Dubai can vote, but someone there on business during an election cannot.
That, however, is just life: Lots of people who plan to vote in elections ultimately do not or cannot because life intervenes. Perhaps the children are sick that day, or an elderly parent needs assistance. The electoral system cannot be expected to take every possibility into account – that is not its purpose.
Ultimately, we have a voting system designed to facilitate those who live here and who must live by the laws that elections produce. We should keep it. We should also, by the way, be very careful about extending the franchise to people who may live here, but who are not citizens, for the very same reasons. Voting only works if all of us collectively live with the decisions we make. If we do not, then we may as well find some other system of Government.