Book Offer
This will close in 10 seconds
As many as 500,000 people are on the electoral register who shouldn’t be, the head of the electoral body, An Coimisún Toghcháin, said today.
Mr Art O’Leary, the head of Electoral Commission of Ireland, said that the electoral register is “not as accurate as it should be” and that it contains many duplicates, as well as the names of people who have died.
Chief executive of the commission, Art O’Leary, made the comments on Tuesday’s RTÉ’s Morning Ireland and said that the headline national turnout figure of 59.7% was a “very blunt measure by which to judge the performance” or “the engagement of people generally with democracy.”
“The electoral register we know is not as complete or as accurate as it should be – there could be 500,000 people on the register who shouldn’t be on it,” Mr O’Leary told the programme.
LOWEST TURNOUT SINCE 1923
It comes as it was revealed that the national turnout for the general election 2024 fell to 59.7%, which is the lowest on record since 1923, which was the last time turnout sat below 60%. It is a 3.19 per cent fall in voter turnout in the last general election held in February 2020, when nearly 62.9% of the public voted.
Low turnout also comes despite a public awareness campaign by the Electoral Commission to get people to register to vote, plus the registration of 400,000 new voters on the register.
Speaking on Morning Ireland today, Mr O’Leary said the figure given may not be correct, as he cited “duplicates” and people who had died.
“So, these are duplicates that exist, or people who have passed away, etc. So, I don’t know if that figure is correct or not, but it sounds to me as if it’s about right,” he said.
“And if that was the case, then our turnout was probably 10% more than we think it was.”
He also said that there is a “longer term project” currently under way to clean up the electoral register and create a centralised database.
“There is a project under way at the moment to create a single database using dates of birth and Eircodes, which will allow us to identify duplicates, but it’s not going to be fixed tomorrow or the day after,” he said.
Responding to reports that voters had received polling cards for some people who had passed away, or others no longer living at an address, he urged people to return them to the relevant local authority with a note explaining what happened.
“This will help us with the completeness and accuracy of the register.” Mr O’Leary also said that the problems experienced with the register does open the possibility to voter fraud.
“It’s certainly a possibility. We have no evidence of fraud, to be honest, and this is a good thing as well. And if you have a polling card in Dublin and one in Cork, you’d have to go to an awful lot of bother then to drive to Cork to go and vote there as well.
However, he added that “no evidence” of fraud existed: “So, if it happens then it is probably immaterial, I suspect. But like I said, we have no evidence of that.”
This will close in 10 seconds