Not personally a fan of compulsory voting. If people don’t want to vote I don’t agree with forcing them to.
If this were to be brought in here it must be accompanied with a standardised None Of The Above option.
But I still don’t like it.
They need to properly clean up the electoral register before this could be enforced..
No.
But if they want to provide a free beer/drink/snacks after anyone votes, I’d vote my ass off.
No
Rights should include the right not to participate.
A right to vote should include a right to not vote.
A right to have a family should include a right to not have a family.
Otherwise it isn’t a right, it’s a mandate.
No
No – if you have the right to vote, you have the right to abstain, Fake the fuckers earn your vote.
Seems like a shallow solution to a much deeper problem.
We’re still doing a lot better in turnout figures than most EU countries. Relax. Furgddah bout it.
No we don’t want to follow Australia’s lead here, people are not obliged to be political – this is overreach which Australia is no stranger to.
Nah. Register is wrong. But it clearly would make no difference to the result
no we dont
Don’t think making people who have zero interest in politics to vote is a good idea. We will end up with people getting elected based on how they present themselves or who has the nicest poster it’s stupid beyond belief
I think it’s a bad idea, would people abroad have to vote too? Too many Irish “citizens ” in the UK / US on account of us handing out passports, would be ripe for abuse.
No. If someone can’t be bothered to vote, why should we care what their opinion is on the matter?
I’m very curious what effect it would have. But I think Hutch would probably be a TD if we had it for the last election.
No. But they badly need to update voting for people who can’t make a physical polling booth esp at short notice.
If you don’t use your vote, you shouldn’t get to whinge about who gets elected imo.
No. Compulsory voting gives me the ick. If people don’t want to vote, they won’t vote. I think the reason most don’t is because they dont know who to vote for or think they can activate change.
We need to modernise the voting process and enable more people to vote remotely.
Compulsory voting is not democratic.
Making voting easier is, every third level institution should have a polling station for a start
I’d like to see compulsory voting as long as theres a box you can tick which says you dont think any of the candidates are good enough to vote for instead of a spoiled vote. I’m sure it would be useful statistic and undeniable.
No, sometimes you live constituencies where none of the candidates appeal to you and you’re forced to turn up and spoil your vote.
I remember people in Australia coming in and not even looking at the ballot paper when marking it to avoid a fine. Awful idea.
Forcing people to vote isn’t democracy
There’s alot of other Australian policies that we can adopt that would make society in Ireland a lot better. This isn’t one of them.
No.
I wonder if it happens in Australia, that people who are forced to vote either spoil their vote or go for a joke candidate?
As a kind of protest vote?
The election has this sub lsing their minds. Mandatory voting ffs, get a grip
Make postal voting much more accessible, even preempt by sending ballots to every individual so they can choose to cast their vote by post say two to three weeks out and up to maybe three days before voting day. If you cast your vote by post, your name is marked out on the register provided to voting stations so you can’t double vote.
Alternatively, just get with the times and allow people to vote through a website or app and cross advertise this on social apps. You’ll have the youth vote in before they’ve finished their first energy drink.
And yeah but what about anonymity with digital voting. The technology and processes are there to at least obfuscate who cast what vote and outside of a core technical team, implement severe penalties for any clown who thinks they should know who voted for who
Maybe it’d be better looking into the reason why it’s got such a low turnout first
Honestly the last people you want voting are people who are being forced to vote under the threat of fines.
Australia allows postal voting and voting abroad.
Unless you are putting that in you can forget about it
Do the Swedish thing and leave the centres open for a full week. Make it incredibly easy to vote.
Why all the posts about mandatory voting all of a sudden?
If you want to increase voter turnout, there are other things to try before going straight for the option likely to piss people off the most. Options such as:
– Increased access to postal voting
– Making voting day a public holiday
No
They are suggesting the register is off by about 500,000 people — so a 60% turnout is actually closer to a 70% turnout. My personal experience is the register is a complete mess. 70% is not an awful turnout.
The big problem is that you would need a way tighter system around people overseas etc. it’s hard to distinguish between someone who is abroad for a year to do a graduate degree and someone who’s moved to Australia and has no intention of coming back.
My understanding is that the percentage is so low in part because our electoral register is basically never cleaned up.
The electoral commission has said they think there could be 500,000 extra names on the register (dead people, duplicates, emigres, etc.) and that as a result our actual turnout could be almost 10% higher than the reported figures.
It’s absolutely driving me mad that nobody is talking about the fact that an absolutely massive percentage of people under the age of 30 are abroad!!
I’m 27, and literally know so many people who are in Australia, Canada, UK etc. and I’m not alone there.
From Jan 2023 to Apr 2024, 120,000 people moved abroad.
I am absolutely outraged with people that didn’t vote, and have made that quite clear to anyone I’ve been talking to who didn’t, but I am not surprised with any of these people at the same time.
The people I would have expected to vote (and that I know voted in 2020) are all gone!!!
So people would rather someone waste their vote than not vote, just because they want to see a turnout increase, boosted by nothing of value (i.e. wasted votes). If you’re going to force people to vote then a few things.
1. Don’t moan about the election result – you wanted people to be made to vote.
2. Don’t moan about parties not offering change or something new, why should they when people are being made to vote.
And significantly I don’t see anyone in favour pointing out the need for a NOTA option (which is being campaigned for in Australia) to give people at least a way to express a dissatisfaction if they’re being forced to vote.
People who mention Australia as a country with compulsory voting when arguing for it should maybe look at the other countries with compulsory voting. It is textbook cherry picking to only mention Australia.
I think this would impact FF/FG negatively so i cant see them attempting this
They need to allow us to vote more than one day first of all. Or vote absent!
What would be the point?
I think it’s. Good idea 👍
Sounds like a great idea. Let’s also bring in compulsory volunteering, and donations to the government.
I usually work as a Presiding Officer on the day and in my experience the register is fecked. The actual turnout is always higher because plenty of people have moved abroad or simply moved towns and never changed got their vote moved. One time when I did the poll clerk job, the Presiding Officer showed me a bunch of names from the register of people who had passed away years ago.
Edit: Also heard stories of people getting voted cards for deceased family members and how it messed with them for some time after
Would need to find at least one candidate worth voting for first
Take people’s right away to choose if they vote or not? How democratic
One of the remaining non violent ways to show complete distrust in the system is by mass non voting
It can be used as a form of civil disobedience. With how corrupt Ireland is I think taking away people’s right to choose is a stupid thing to do
47 comments
Not personally a fan of compulsory voting. If people don’t want to vote I don’t agree with forcing them to.
If this were to be brought in here it must be accompanied with a standardised None Of The Above option.
But I still don’t like it.
They need to properly clean up the electoral register before this could be enforced..
No.
But if they want to provide a free beer/drink/snacks after anyone votes, I’d vote my ass off.
No
Rights should include the right not to participate.
A right to vote should include a right to not vote.
A right to have a family should include a right to not have a family.
Otherwise it isn’t a right, it’s a mandate.
No
No – if you have the right to vote, you have the right to abstain, Fake the fuckers earn your vote.
Seems like a shallow solution to a much deeper problem.
We’re still doing a lot better in turnout figures than most EU countries. Relax. Furgddah bout it.
No we don’t want to follow Australia’s lead here, people are not obliged to be political – this is overreach which Australia is no stranger to.
Nah. Register is wrong. But it clearly would make no difference to the result
no we dont
Don’t think making people who have zero interest in politics to vote is a good idea. We will end up with people getting elected based on how they present themselves or who has the nicest poster it’s stupid beyond belief
I think it’s a bad idea, would people abroad have to vote too? Too many Irish “citizens ” in the UK / US on account of us handing out passports, would be ripe for abuse.
No. If someone can’t be bothered to vote, why should we care what their opinion is on the matter?
I’m very curious what effect it would have. But I think Hutch would probably be a TD if we had it for the last election.
No. But they badly need to update voting for people who can’t make a physical polling booth esp at short notice.
If you don’t use your vote, you shouldn’t get to whinge about who gets elected imo.
No. Compulsory voting gives me the ick. If people don’t want to vote, they won’t vote. I think the reason most don’t is because they dont know who to vote for or think they can activate change.
We need to modernise the voting process and enable more people to vote remotely.
Compulsory voting is not democratic.
Making voting easier is, every third level institution should have a polling station for a start
I’d like to see compulsory voting as long as theres a box you can tick which says you dont think any of the candidates are good enough to vote for instead of a spoiled vote. I’m sure it would be useful statistic and undeniable.
No, sometimes you live constituencies where none of the candidates appeal to you and you’re forced to turn up and spoil your vote.
I remember people in Australia coming in and not even looking at the ballot paper when marking it to avoid a fine. Awful idea.
Forcing people to vote isn’t democracy
There’s alot of other Australian policies that we can adopt that would make society in Ireland a lot better. This isn’t one of them.
No.
I wonder if it happens in Australia, that people who are forced to vote either spoil their vote or go for a joke candidate?
As a kind of protest vote?
The election has this sub lsing their minds. Mandatory voting ffs, get a grip
Make postal voting much more accessible, even preempt by sending ballots to every individual so they can choose to cast their vote by post say two to three weeks out and up to maybe three days before voting day. If you cast your vote by post, your name is marked out on the register provided to voting stations so you can’t double vote.
Alternatively, just get with the times and allow people to vote through a website or app and cross advertise this on social apps. You’ll have the youth vote in before they’ve finished their first energy drink.
And yeah but what about anonymity with digital voting. The technology and processes are there to at least obfuscate who cast what vote and outside of a core technical team, implement severe penalties for any clown who thinks they should know who voted for who
Maybe it’d be better looking into the reason why it’s got such a low turnout first
Honestly the last people you want voting are people who are being forced to vote under the threat of fines.
Australia allows postal voting and voting abroad.
Unless you are putting that in you can forget about it
Do the Swedish thing and leave the centres open for a full week. Make it incredibly easy to vote.
Why all the posts about mandatory voting all of a sudden?
If you want to increase voter turnout, there are other things to try before going straight for the option likely to piss people off the most. Options such as:
– Increased access to postal voting
– Making voting day a public holiday
No
They are suggesting the register is off by about 500,000 people — so a 60% turnout is actually closer to a 70% turnout. My personal experience is the register is a complete mess. 70% is not an awful turnout.
The big problem is that you would need a way tighter system around people overseas etc. it’s hard to distinguish between someone who is abroad for a year to do a graduate degree and someone who’s moved to Australia and has no intention of coming back.
My understanding is that the percentage is so low in part because our electoral register is basically never cleaned up.
The electoral commission has said they think there could be 500,000 extra names on the register (dead people, duplicates, emigres, etc.) and that as a result our actual turnout could be almost 10% higher than the reported figures.
It’s absolutely driving me mad that nobody is talking about the fact that an absolutely massive percentage of people under the age of 30 are abroad!!
I’m 27, and literally know so many people who are in Australia, Canada, UK etc. and I’m not alone there.
From Jan 2023 to Apr 2024, 120,000 people moved abroad.
I am absolutely outraged with people that didn’t vote, and have made that quite clear to anyone I’ve been talking to who didn’t, but I am not surprised with any of these people at the same time.
The people I would have expected to vote (and that I know voted in 2020) are all gone!!!
So people would rather someone waste their vote than not vote, just because they want to see a turnout increase, boosted by nothing of value (i.e. wasted votes). If you’re going to force people to vote then a few things.
1. Don’t moan about the election result – you wanted people to be made to vote.
2. Don’t moan about parties not offering change or something new, why should they when people are being made to vote.
And significantly I don’t see anyone in favour pointing out the need for a NOTA option (which is being campaigned for in Australia) to give people at least a way to express a dissatisfaction if they’re being forced to vote.
People who mention Australia as a country with compulsory voting when arguing for it should maybe look at the other countries with compulsory voting. It is textbook cherry picking to only mention Australia.
I think this would impact FF/FG negatively so i cant see them attempting this
They need to allow us to vote more than one day first of all. Or vote absent!
What would be the point?
I think it’s. Good idea 👍
Sounds like a great idea. Let’s also bring in compulsory volunteering, and donations to the government.
I usually work as a Presiding Officer on the day and in my experience the register is fecked. The actual turnout is always higher because plenty of people have moved abroad or simply moved towns and never changed got their vote moved. One time when I did the poll clerk job, the Presiding Officer showed me a bunch of names from the register of people who had passed away years ago.
Edit: Also heard stories of people getting voted cards for deceased family members and how it messed with them for some time after
Would need to find at least one candidate worth voting for first
Take people’s right away to choose if they vote or not? How democratic
One of the remaining non violent ways to show complete distrust in the system is by mass non voting
It can be used as a form of civil disobedience. With how corrupt Ireland is I think taking away people’s right to choose is a stupid thing to do
Comments are closed.