Revealed: Counties with highest number of spoiled votes as people urged to focus on ballot paper

A campaign is being launched by the commission today in a bid to ensure there is no repeat when voters in Ireland head to the polls for the local, European and Limerick mayoral elections next Friday.

An Coimisiun Toghchain chair, Ms Justice Marie Baker, said that while some will be protest votes, many of the spoiled ballot papers have been wrongly filled in.

Some of the spoiled papers did not include a number one vote, or some papers included two number one votes which also rendered the ballot paper as invalid.

In the 2019 local and European elections, figures shows that 34,618 such votes were spoiled in the local elections and 73,870 were spoiled in the European elections held on the same day.

In the local elections, Dublin tallied the highest number of spoiled votes between its four councils at 11,072. Dublin City Council was the local authority that had the highest number of spoiled votes at 4,368.

Cork was the county that had the second highest at 3,743 between city and county, while Kildare had the third highest at 1,432 spoiled votes. Galway was fourth (1,708) followed by Meath (1,285).

Leitrim (214) saw the lowest number of spoiled votes, followed by Longford (311), Carlow (340), Sligo (461) and Offaly (462).

Justice Baker said it is “such a disappointment” to see the scale of spoilt and invalid votes, adding that that 108,000 is a “huge number”.

She alluded to the spoiled votes in Dublin as an “uncounted mountain of ballots” which she said is “shocking” when we know that in Ireland’s elections, many seats are won by a mere handful of votes.

“The nature of our electoral system means that for many candidates, these votes could be the difference between winning and losing a seat,” she said.

Out of all the local election’s spoiled votes in 2019, 1,345 didn’t have an official mark, while 19,103 didn’t have their first preference clearly indicated.

A total of 12,067 had their first preference indicated for more than one candidate, while 2,103 spoiled ballots had “writing or a mark by which the voter could be identified”.

Out of 73, 870 spoiled votes in the European Elections in 2019, the Dublin constituency saw 15,345 spoiled votes, Midlands-North-West saw 21,682 and the South, which has the highest electorate at 1,417,017 eligible voters saw the highest number at 36,897.

To help achieve this goal of lowering the number of spoiled votes, the commission has kicked off its “Don’t Spoil Your Day” Voter Education Drive.

A new three-minute and one-minute video showing what you need to vote and exactly how to properly fill in your ballot has been released.

The video, which can be viewed here, takes people through the voting process from entering the polling station to successfully completing your vote.

Justice Baker said that two particular problems were identified on the spoiled votes.

“One is that people didn’t identify their first choice. There was no number one marked anywhere on the ballot paper. And the one thing you have to do is identify your first choice because that is the first one that is counted,” she said.

“The second problem that was identified, oddly enough, was that people voted two number ones in the same ballot paper, and again who’s to decide between those which is the one that counts and which is the one that doesn’t count.

“The act (Electoral Reform Act) is quite fluid in that it allows anything to be acceptable as a number one vote provided it’s apparent from it that it’s number one.

“So if you only vote for one person and you put an X beside that person, then that will be deemed to be a number one.”

Chief executive of the commission, Art O’Leary, said: “It’s been over four years since we’ve had a competitive election in this country.

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“So, some people are voting for the first time and may have some doubts about how the system works, or some people because they haven’t voted in so long, may have slipped their mind how the process works.”

People voting in the local and European elections, which takes place on June 7, will be given two ballot papers, while voters in Limerick will have three, given the vote for a directly elected mayor.

Justice Baker said the deliberately spoiled votes are always obvious.

“Somebody writes something like, ‘none of you’ or that kind of thing. That’s what normally happens,” she added.

“Whereas, the person who forgets to put a number one in and starts at two, thinks that they have voted. They haven’t.”

They said that people who make a mistake on their ballot can ask staff at the polling station for a new one.

Parts of the Electoral Reform Act, which gives the Electoral Commission regulatory powers, have not yet been enacted following concerns raised by the European Commission.

Mr O’Leary said their current powers are enough to deal with any issues that arise, particularly around misinformation and disinformation on social media.

“Many, many countries are reporting interference (in elections) and we can’t assume that we will be exempt,” he added.

“The Oireachtas had some powers in mind for the An Coimisiun Toghchain when it passed the Electoral Reform Act.

Further information can be found on their website electoralcommission.ie/how-to-vote/