A good, if rather fatalistically minded friend of mine has a habit of noting, in the aftermath of objectively outrageous examples of misbehaviour by the people running the country, that those in power seem to get a thrill from doing things that they know will leave people outraged, but powerless to do anything about their outrage. “Rubbing our noses in it”, he calls it.
In late February, in the middle of the current referendum campaign, the Electoral Commission did something that fits the bill. It announced, in a press release, the appointment of a new “research advisory group” that will “will support An Coimisiún in delivering its ambitious programme of research proposed in its draft Research Programme 2024-2026”. Amongst the 13 appointments were three members of taxpayer funded NGOs which typically campaign in the very referendums and elections that the electoral commission is supposed to regulate: Brian Killoran of the Immigrant Council of Ireland; Nuala Connolly of the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission; and Orla O’Connor, of the National Women’s Council of Ireland. O’Connor, it should be noted, is a leading figure in the “Yes” campaign in the referendums that are due to be held on Friday, and which the electoral commission is tasked with refereeing impartially.
It need not be said that the political tilt of the new “research advisory group” does not stop with the 3 NGO representatives. It includes somebody called Adam Lambe as a “youth representative”, whose latest role is as a founding member of an organisation called “JEF Ireland”, which campaigns for a federal European Union, and whose career began with the taxpayer-funded National Youth Council of Ireland. It also includes Dr. Bridget Quilligan, who is described by the Electoral Commission as a “traveler activist”, without noting her involvement in the taxpayer-funded Irish Traveler Movement which, in its last report (2021) revealed €406,000 in annual income, of which just €3,370 came in membership fees. The vast bulk of the remainder was donated by the taxpayer.
Other members include Professor David Farrell of UCD, whose very admirable love of dogs should not preclude us from mentioning the fact that he is one of the chief architects of the idea of “citizens assemblies”, which have become so popular here; and Professor David Kenny of Trinity College Dublin, last seen writing a letter to the Irish Times yesterday calling into question the analysis of “No” campaigners in the current referendums.
In short: A more progressive, left-wing group of people it would be difficult to find. These are to be the people “advising” the body which controls and regulates Irish elections and referendums. There is not one single appointee who, at least at first blush, could be identified with any perspective other than the progressivism which passes for religion in the upper reaches of establishment Ireland. If you’re somebody who’s sceptical of the state, and suspects that the Electoral Commission might just be susceptible to bias, they didn’t even throw you a bone. Would it have killed them to appoint, say, Cormac Lucey? He could reliably be out-voted 12-1, and yet at least pass for someone with a different perspective than the rest of them.
But of course, there’s no need to do anything like that, because the truth is that the Electoral Commission knows full well that it can appoint one of the leading figures in the “Yes” campaign to its board of research advisors, fewer than seven days before a key referendum, and rely with certainty on absolute silence from the mainstream media in the country, and most of the opposition parties. Rubbing our noses in it.
The trouble, of course, with rubbing people’s noses in it like this is that while it might provide a short-term thrill, it’s corrosive in the long-term. The idea of an electoral commission that is independent and above politics and unbiased only really works so long as most people who engage with that commission trust it to provide the public with accurate and unbiased information. Are the public going to trust it – to the same extent as before, at least – when they learn that it is being advised by a serial political campaigner who leads one of the most reliably partisan political organisations in the country?
For now, the Commission can surely rely on the fact that most media outlets won’t bother to report it, and those that do will certainly not draw the public’s attention to any conflicts of interest that Orla O’Connor might have. But that’s the short term. In the long term, it only needs one or two people to point this stuff out on national television, or on the radio, or in articles like these, for the public to begin to wonder whether the “independent electoral commission” is really as independent as the name suggests.
It is not, is the answer. Nor, for the avoidance of doubt, was it ever intended to be.
After all, if the independent electoral commission was actually independent, would politicians have been so eager to set it up?