It was great to see Dr. Garrett Fitzgerald and others teaching Frank Luntz about the Irish electoral system. As you’ll know I was not a fan of the American ‘guru’ and his take on Irish politics, never mind the way in which he tried to put words into the mouths of those participating in the focus groups. It’s a pity he did not do this type of research before he did the focus group programmes. Even over the weekend on radio after being at the counts he came across as particularly pompous and naive.
There is something very beautiful about the Irish electoral system – very painful for many I know, but democratic to the heart. As Dr. Fitzgerald told Frank about the good thing that is non electronic voting I cheered. I spent all day Friday blogging the count and enjoying the fruits of the tallypersons labours but in previous elections I have been at counts with my clipboard sniffing those ballot papers and enjoying the analysis of the previous weeks and years work of the candidate and his team.
In this case I too am a luddite, let’s keep the pencil and paper, the laptops at the back of the room are fine – particularly when wired up and emailing me with the tallies as they progress!. But the leaning over the barriers with the sticker on your back to denote your side observing the democratic process has to remain or we’ll never really understand why someone voted the way they did or where the vote was etc. and we may never truely trust it if we cannot see it, feel it and smell it.
I’m in absolute agreement, and was one of the (hopefully very) many who applauded John Bowman at the end of Q&A last night when he said ‘long may our democracy be run with a ballot paper in one hand and a pencil in another’. The assorted Frenchies hanging around the house all weekend couldn’t quite ‘get’ the excitement of the count, but they’ve been spoiled by their own system of practically-instantaneuous (spl?) results. Long live the ballot paper!
(p.s. great new template)
I only learnt at the weekend that those instantaneous results in France are an agreed exit poll!!!?! Tut!
Frank Luntz is a complete twerp (but that’s a polite way of saying U.S. Republican!) Agreed on the paper voting system, it makes the voting, tallying and counting very exciting. Last time out we had the electronic voting in Dublin West and it was all rather anticlimactic!
Love the new enhanced Maman Poulet… we’re you long dangling from the window to do that?
The breakdown from each box is an interesting sport.
I have to agree with you regarding paper voting and like you I actually applauded John Bowman when he made his comments regarding voting. How sad is that!! Having witnessed another count last Friday it brought home to me the transparency of our count system. Watching votes being allocated to each candidate, being tallied, counted, distributed etc was democracy in action. In my time as a public reprentative not once did someone contact me to say “Seamus you must do something about this voting system” So who is driving this agenda!
I couldn’t believe my ears when I heard Bertie accusing concerned IT professionals of being luddites. This is a man who has, to the best of my knowledge, no expertise in anything except book-keeping in the Mater and evading hard questions.
What’s even more worrying is that he continues to push this agenda.
What’s trebly worrying is that his sidekick Dick Roche thinks public confidence is a sufficient test of a software system.