{"id":146619,"date":"2025-10-26T18:47:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-26T18:47:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/146619\/"},"modified":"2025-10-26T18:47:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-26T18:47:08","slug":"spoiled-votes-deemed-rebuke-to-political-establishment-by-steen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/146619\/","title":{"rendered":"Spoiled votes deemed \u2018rebuke to political establishment\u2019 by Steen"},"content":{"rendered":"

The amount of spoiled votes in the presidential election is a \u201cbig rebuke to the political establishment\u201d, Maria Steen has said.<\/p>\n

Ms Steen, a barrister and a member of Catholic advocacy group the Iona Institute, came closest of the other prospective candidates to getting her name on the ballot paper but was ultimately unsuccessful.<\/p>\n

The mother-of-five, who was a prominent voice among those campaigning for No votes in referendums on abortion and same-sex marriage, received the backing of 18 TDs and senators to get on the ballot paper \u2013 two short of the 20 nominations required.<\/p>\n

\n I don’t think that the spoiled vote can be taken as a vote for me. There were lots of other issues that people mentioned on their ballot papers, and they should not be ignored<\/p>\n

Maria Steen\n <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

She also campaigned on the No side in last year\u2019s referendums on family and care, which were defeated.<\/p>\n

It was observed during the presidential election count that many of those who spoiled their ballots had written in Ms Steen\u2019s name instead of the eligible candidates.<\/p>\n

Speaking on Sunday, she said: \u201cThe really big story is the spoiled votes. It is unprecedented, 10 times the size of the last spoiled vote count in the last presidential election.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s fair to say that it is a big rebuke to the political establishment who sought to prevent any competition in this election.<\/p>\n

\"CatherineCatherine Connolly, right, defeated Heather Humphreys in the presidential election (Niall Carson\/PA)<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s clear that there are a lot of people in this country who feel unrepresented.\u201d<\/p>\n

Speaking to RT\u00c9\u2019s This Week programme, Ms Steen said she was \u201creally very grateful and humbled\u201d to all the people who wrote in her name.<\/p>\n

However, she said: \u201cI don\u2019t think that the spoiled vote can be taken as a vote for me.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were lots of other issues that people mentioned on their ballot papers, and they should not be ignored.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ms Steen said she \u201chad nothing to do\u201d with the #SpoilTheVote campaign, adding: \u201cI decided that because I was not a candidate, I didn\u2019t get the nomination, that it wouldn\u2019t be proper for me to call for any particular outcome, so I wasn\u2019t involved.\u201d<\/p>\n

There were 213,738 invalid votes in the election, out of a total of 1,656,436.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The amount of spoiled votes in the presidential election is a \u201cbig rebuke to the political establishment\u201d, Maria…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":146620,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[9,10,18,13,14,6,19,17,11,12,15,16,5,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-146619","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-top-stories","22":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115441962043176475","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146619","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=146619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146619\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/146620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}