{"id":145992,"date":"2025-10-26T09:38:12","date_gmt":"2025-10-26T09:38:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/145992\/"},"modified":"2025-10-26T09:38:12","modified_gmt":"2025-10-26T09:38:12","slug":"concerns-raised-over-200000-plus-spoiled-votes-in-presidential-election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/145992\/","title":{"rendered":"Concerns raised over 200,000-plus spoiled votes in presidential election"},"content":{"rendered":"

Several senior politicians have said a response is needed to the 213,738 spoiled votes in the presidential election<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It represents 13% of all votes cast on Friday, and a more than tenfold increase on the number of spoiled votes in the last presidential election, when there were 18,438 invalid ballots.<\/p>\n

The turnout was 46%, up on the 2018 presidential election, which had a turnout of 44%.<\/p>\n

The electoral commission has said there \u201cwill clearly be a need for deeper and further reflection\u201d about why there were so many spoiled ballots in the election.<\/p>\n

An Coimisi\u00fan Toghch\u00e1in said the number of spoiled ballots \u201cis significantly higher than normal and it is clear that some people chose to deliberately spoil their votes\u201d.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

In the Dublin Mid-West constituency, 21% of votes cast were spoilt. Cork North-Central say 6,215 invalid ballots out of a total of 43,686.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Many had an \u201cx\u201d or slash drawn through all three candidates, or the words \u201cspoiled\u201d or \u201cspoilt\u201d written on the slip.<\/p>\n

There were also a significant number of spoiled votes with anti-Government messages on them, including \u201cno democracy\u201d, \u201cEU puppets\u201d and \u201cno from me\u201d.<\/p>\n

A number of names were also written on many spoiled ballot papers in the count centre in Adamstown, including Maria Steen, who tried to become a presidential candidate but failed to get enough nominations by the deadline.<\/p>\n

One ballot paper had a sticker of Ms Steen on it.<\/p>\n

Other names seen written on spoiled ballot papers in Adamstown included Enoch Burke, Father Ted, Michael Collins, Bobby Sands, Dustin the Turkey, Donald Duck and Donald Trump.<\/p>\n

Sinn F\u00e9in Dublin Mid-West TD Eoin \u00d3 Broin said the spoiled votes meant that there are \u201cpeople out there who are very angry, who are very unhappy\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur job in the time ahead is to try and convince more of those people that there is an alternative, there is a message of hope, and we hear the fact that they are not happy. So, there is a job of work to do afterwards.\u201d<\/p>\n

Following the result, the Taoiseach raised concern about the high level of spoiled ballots, saying the Government would need to interpret it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think there was probably an issue with the restrictive nature of how one gets on the ballot and that\u2019s something that, collectively, the Oireachtas can look at,\u201d Miche\u00e1l Martin said.<\/p>\n

However, Mr Martin said it was \u201cnot fair\u201d to instruct TDs and Senators to be pressured to back a candidate that may not adhere to their views.<\/p>\n

Mr Martin said the Oireachtas would need to look at what possible changes could be made to the nomination process, as it would require a constitutional amendment.<\/p>\n

T\u00e1naiste Simon Harris also expressed concern about the high number of spoiled ballots and said some voters put \u201cquite a lot of effort in spoiling their ballot\u201d.<\/p>\n

He said it showed \u201cthe number of people in Ireland now who are clearly feeling disaffected or disconnected with politics\u201d.<\/p>\n

People Before Profit TD Paul Murphy said he did not think it was a \u201cmoral failing\u201d to spoil votes, and that it was a \u201clegitimate choice that people can make\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is going to be a challenge for everybody in politics, but I would say for the left in particular, that there is a group of people who are very disaffected, very alienated, very angry at the political system.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Several senior politicians have said a response is needed to the 213,738 spoiled votes in the presidential election.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":145993,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[9,10,18,13,14,6,19,17,11,12,15,16,5,9168,59,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-145992","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-eire","11":"tag-featured-news","12":"tag-featurednews","13":"tag-headlines","14":"tag-ie","15":"tag-ireland","16":"tag-latest-news","17":"tag-latestnews","18":"tag-main-news","19":"tag-mainnews","20":"tag-news","21":"tag-place-republic-of-ireland","22":"tag-presidential-election","23":"tag-top-stories","24":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115439803293649933","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145992"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145992\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/145993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}