When Bertie Ahern casts his vote this morning in the Irish Republic’s closest-fought general election for decades, the cameras would do well to focus on his clenched teeth. The Fianna Fail leader and Taoiseach is not happy about having to go into a polling booth with a “stupid old pencil”.
A half-hour drive from his North Dublin constituency the object of Mr Ahern’s ire is under lock and key, stored in a hangar on a coastal military base: thousands of electronic voting machines, purchased at a cost of more than €50 million three years ago.
And the expense is rising. Storage of the 7,500 Dutch-made machinery costs another €1 million (£685,000) a year.
The machines were used as pilots in a number of constituencies in the 2002 general election and in the second Nice referendum that same year.
They were mothballed after the independent Commission on Electronic Voting said, before the 2004 local and European elections, that it did not have confidence in them.
Last year, in another report, the commission raised further questions about the security of the machines.
“Our silly old system is outdated,” Mr Ahern told the Dail, the Irish parliament, recently.
“We have to correct the software, which will cost €500,000, and then try to move forward. Otherwise we will go into the 21st century being the laughing stock with our stupid old pencils.”
The issue reemerged just before Mr Ahern called elections when the Opposition raised the cost as an example of the profligacy of the Fianna Fail-Progressive Democrat coalition Government.
With an economy that has recorded year-on-year growth for the past decade, the Opposition has tried to portray the Government as wasting what may have been the country’s boom years through incompetence.
As traffic jams worsen, hospital waiting lists lengthen and schools burst at the seams, it’s a strategy that seems to strike a chord with harassed voters. Opinion polls have seesawed throughout the campaign, making it too close to call.
The two main political groupings, Mr Ahern’s centre-right coalition and Enda Kenny’s centre-left alliance of Fine Gael and Labour, are running neck-and-neck.
If neither of the big two gets a majority under Ireland’s complex multi-seat constituency, proportional representation system based upon the single transferable vote, smaller parties, such as Sinn Fein, the Greens or independents, could hold the balance of power in the 166-seat lower chamber.
The likelihood is that tomorrow, when the count begins around the country, the outcome of the election may take days or even weeks to emerge.
With each of the Republic’s 43 constituencies electing four or five TDs (Members of Parliament), manually recounting votes to eliminate candidates took up to six days in some cases during the 2002 election. Today voters must choose by writing ‘1’ against their first choice then ‘2’, ‘3’ and so on against successive candidates with those “stupid” pencils.
“What kind of a country is this?” asked Pat Rabitte, leader of the Labour Party, last month as he rubbed salt into Mr Ahern’s wounds over the e-voting fiasco.
Mr Ahern agreed, saying that he was embarrassed by the speed of France’s presidential election result. He blamed the opposition for raising political objections to the “perfect” voting machines.
He said: “You’re dead right. I must have felt embarrassed when I watched over 80 million people have the result of their highest polls ever – over 85 per cent – in two hours.
“I had to go down to Meath and apologise to the people of Meath for being a technologically advanced country and one of the biggest exporters of software, that we’re going back to the pencils”.
“It’s a disgrace, and any waste of money on the voting system lies at your door,” he told his opposition tormentors.
“With a bit of luck, our election will be finished in about five days, as we go checking the bins to see if a vote blew off the pile. It is an embarrassment, and I hope in the next Dail, that we are able to rid ourselves of the horrendous difficulties we have trying to be a modern country.”
Ballot box
2.9m eligible voters
63% turnout at last election, down from 74% in 1982
166 seats being contested
1918 date of the first election to Dail Eireann, when Ireland was still not officially independent
10 Taoiseachs have held office, including Bertie Ahern
24 years Eamonn de Valera spent in total as leader of the Dail before going on to become President
Sources: ElectionsIreland.org; University College Dublin, The Irish Times
Election time
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Originally Posted by Tribesman
I know to you all, they sound like 'red' and 'green', but frankly, I cannot hear a difference, let alone speak one.
Anyway, I always thought cunning Charlie would have made a great fox to chase - I believe that's why we invited the fellow to hunt in the first place...
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