Elections
Archived Posts from this Category
Clucking away crookedly through media, politics and life.
Archived Posts from this Category
Posted by Maman Poulet on 02 Feb 2010 | Tagged as: Blogging, Elections, Irish Politics, Live Blogging
Tonight in Trinity College Dublin a meeting of the Oireachtas Committee on the Constitution will take place to discuss electoral reform. It’s believed to be the first time that the committee will have met outside the Oireachtas to debate. Discussions at the meeting will include presentations by members of the public on electoral reform. (Yes I know the meeting is only down the road, but you never know what this may have started! The decentralisation of the Dáil and Seanad cannot be too far away!)
Tonights meeting will then be followed by a panel discussion chaired by John Bowman with participants including Noel Dempsey, Minister for Transport, Professor Ken Benoit, head of the Department of Political Science, Senator Ivana Bacik, Trinity Fellow, Sean Ardagh, Chair of the Joint Oireachtas Committee, Jim O’Keeffe, Vice Chair of the Joint Oireachtas Committee and The Hon. Mr. Justice Frank Clarke.
The event is hosted by TCD JS Irish Politics (3rd year) class and TCD Department of Political Science.
There will be a liveblog and webcast, more information can be found on TheStory.ie. I’ll be liveblogging at some stage hopefully if the wifi goddesses oblige! So please join in and we’ll try and get some points across from the viewing public!
Posted by Maman Poulet on 02 Oct 2009 | Tagged as: Blogging, Elections, Irish Politics, Lisbon, Live Blogging
I’ll be in Dublin Castle tomorrow at the National Count Centre with Cian and Alexia and a load of foreign media scratching their heads and wondering what is going on!
There is a liveblog already established for the count results and we are looking forward to pulling in news from around the country as the tallies come in. Cian posts about how to contact us with information and as usual in Irish blogging/online crowdsourcing and all hands on deck is the way to go.
Thanks in advance for helping out if you are at a count or otherwise following results. If you have contacts outside of Ireland who may be interested in keeping in touch with things you should point them in the direction of the liveblog and also to additional coverage and analysis on Irishelection.com.
I’m voting later today and will be on the look out for Cóirites monitoring the goings on. Watching them watching us eh? We even have a blog for watching the votes go in.
Posted by Maman Poulet on 16 Aug 2009 | Tagged as: Elections, Irish Politics
It’s a perfect August story – two years to the election and the bookies have a poll on it. Who’s going to be the next president of Ireland?
Fergus Finlay is a bit surprised at his mention, last week I heard Niall Crowley’s name a few times as a possible Labour nominee. Is nobody mentioning Michael D.?

Paddy Power has Bertie Ahern at 2/1, Brian Crowley at 4/1 and Fergus Finlay at 10/1. Ivan Yates is at 20/1 which has me half wondering if I can start the ‘elect Ivan now’ campaign if it means I don’t have to listen to him on the radio!
You can read the full list of odds here. Any names not mentioned that you would throw into the hat? And what will Fine Gael do? Could it be Avril versus Mairead all over again? Or will Sean Kelly (the GAA Sean rather than Rothar Sean) or Gay Mitchell get the nod for the candidacy instead?
(and no I don’t really want Ivan Yates as President of Ireland but maybe we could send him to Brussels never to be heard from again?)
Posted by Maman Poulet on 08 Jun 2009 | Tagged as: Blogging, Declan Ganley, Elections, Irish Politics, Live Blogging, Uncategorized
Understatement!
I’ll let other people talk about the liveblog and the results. The weekend was stunning on a personal note and it was brilliant to work with Cian, Alexia, Mark, and Damien over Saturday and Sunday in bringing it all to life and have inputs from so many others around the country. Thanks again to D4 hotels for the room for the blogger HQ and like many of the readers and commenters on the live blog it seems people are saying roll on the General Election and online media bringing news to people who are interested and those who claim not to be intersted but really are!
I’m very tired but have had a few thoughts simmering – excuse the babble!
And finally for all those wheelie bins out there – time to fight back against those who are looking for you and claim you went missing!

Posted by Maman Poulet on 06 Jun 2009 | Tagged as: Blogging, Elections, Irish Politics
This weekend is like Christmas for some (ok me) – tallying and watching transfers and predicting and the like.
At IrishElection.com we’re running a liveblog which will collate information as we can get it from counts around the country. More coverage on the election will also be found on the the blog including links to other peoples blogs, videos, pictures etc. Please come join us and contribute your thoughts and information.
Many thanks to D4 hotels who have provided the Blogger HQ for today! Much appreciated and we’ll be blogging from there later this morning.
If anyone needs to email anything to me (Tally spreadsheets would be especially welcome!) please send to tips (@) mamanpoulet.com
Posted by Maman Poulet on 25 May 2009 | Tagged as: Elections, Irish Politics, LGBT
Lisa Connell is standing as an Independent LGBT Candidate in Dublin South West Inner City/Dublin 8 area of Dublin City Council.
Lisa is not the first independent LGBT candidate to contest an election in Ireland – the first I believe was Liz Noonan who ran as a Lesbian Feminist Candidate in 3 Dáil elections in 1981 and twice in 1982 in Dublin South East.
In the 1989 General Election a number Independent Gay Candidates ran campaigns – Tonie Walsh in Dublin South East, Don Donnelly in Dublin North Central and Michael Foley (Pastor of the Metropolitan Community Church) who got 1,122 first preferences and ran in Dublin South Central and I think there was a third candidate and will correct the post when I get an answer to an email!
In 1992 there were considerations towards running gay rights candidates (it was before decrminialisation) but instead campaigns to get parties to commit to equality and decriminalisation were run by lesbian and gay groups.
In terms of local and national elections since 1992 we’ve had a number of openly gay candidates running for election in several parties and there are some running in the local elections this year.
This year it seems we’re back to the 1980’s in terms of seeing an Independent LGBT Candidate join the fray. I’ll be back to the issue of single issue campaigns and lgbt rights no doubt but for now you can find out more on Lisa’s Facebook page and see links to various other media appearance.
I met Lisa last week and asked her why she was standing for election on an Independent LGBT based candidacy. (I’m still learning how to use the Zi6 – apologies for wobbles etc!)
Update:
Tonie Walsh has been in touch to confirm the third candidate in 1989 General Election (Michael Foley) and also to tell of his own campaign to run for election to Dublin Corporation in 1985 on an urban renewal, tenancy rights and better local government ticket. So that’s the first openly gay candidate who ran for Dublin Corporation sorted – and I’ll leave it to Tonie to tell the full story of his campaign, selection and manager – there’s a chapter in a book there HINT!
Posted by Maman Poulet on 19 May 2009 | Tagged as: Elections, Irish Politics, Social Media
ah oops wrong sport sorry..

Find out who own’s this Mascot, who’s been putting up Maurice Ahern’s posters in Dublin Central and what Fianna Fáil candidates are experiencing on the ground in the latest round up on Irishelection.com
Posted by Maman Poulet on 17 May 2009 | Tagged as: Elections, Irish Politics, Social Media
Thanks to the tip off I received and a break in the weather I headed up to see Enda Kenny and Fine Gael’s European Parliament Election Candidates unveil their poster for the campaign a few hours ago.

It was interesting to see who turned up and who didn’t. Gay Mitchell MEP the lone candidate running in Dublin was first to arrive, followed by Enda Kenny who seemed to be minding Senator John Paul Phelan. Phelan needs a bit of minding given that Mairead McGuinness seems not to want acknowledge him at all in her race to top the poll in the East consituency. Last to arrive was Senator Joe O’Reilly from the North-West Constituency. No sign of Jim Higgins, Sean Kelly, Colm Burke or Mairead herself.
Following a press gaggle where Kenny probably called on the Greens to walk from government and the like, (It was all a bit much for me to muscle in to get to hear) he bounded across the road (nearly jaywalking) and headed for the cherry picker. You can watch the rest below and no doubt see the pictures on the TV news later on and in tomorrows papers.
Posted by Maman Poulet on 14 May 2009 | Tagged as: Elections, Irish Politics
They’re down to 3% in the TNS/MRBI Poll however tomorrow the Green Party are launching their local election manifesto and a new election website.
And in the fine tradition of the Irish Blogosphere finding all the Political Party’s new websites first (ok so they did not really hide it too well – I just went clicking) here is the link to the website for you to poke about, see what’s working and not, and find out funny bits about your local candidate.
Happy hunting!
Posted by Maman Poulet on 14 May 2009 | Tagged as: Declan Ganley, Elections, Irish Politics
So anyone received a phonecall from one of the 15 full time ‘genuine Libertas volunteers‘ (free lunch provided!) doing phonebanking and making calls to 100,000 households?
I know it’s been underway for a few weeks but wonder what the pitch is now as we are well into the campaign? Any Dublin Calls being made or is it specially targetted at the East constituency? Stories welcome!