Tea and Cakes

Today is Election Day in Ireland. I’m able to vote here in general, local and European elections, but not in referendums. (Essentially, I think this boils down to me being able to have some say in who makes the day to day decisions, but I couldn’t oust the president and pop the queen back in as head of state. Not that I’d want to do that, but you get the point.)

I haven’t voted for a while, and that’s kinda bugged me. I think it’s really important that people do vote. (You know the people you dislike? The small minded, bigoted ones? They vote. You should too.) However, during the last election here I didn’t realise I could vote, and was only just realising that actually I was probably going to spend the rest of my life living here rather than heading off travelling again. I’ve looked into registering as an overseas voter for the UK a few times. Each time I find different information, and I couldn’t decipher the last form I saw. I *love* forms, but this one was way beyond me. You also needed to know where you were last registered to vote in the UK, and I honestly don’t know if that was Sheffield or Worthing. Ah, excuses, excuses. I should stop making them and sort that one out, but now I live in Ireland I’m not sure I should be voting in the UK.

Anyway. Today. Election day.

The Gurrier pretty much summed up the current state of things here (click on the links in the last paragraph to read about some of the scandals) and nicely sums up how politics in Ireland work here , and he does it so much more eloquently than me. Surfice to say that in most countries our esteemed leader would have had to resign in shame many times over, or have been thrown out. Instead, each revelation of corruption and screwing over the country, wasting our money instead of spending it on schools or healthcare results in a bump in the polls and increased popularity.

Oops, gone off on a minor rant again.

Usually for me voting has been either a case of
a) Picking the least objectionable of a couple of candidates with very little to tell them apart.
b) Being able to vote for someone who I mostly agree with but has no chance of getting in.

This time it’s different. This time I had two candidates who I actually wanted to vote for. One of them is even already a TD, and should be again. This is quite exciting.

Ireland has a proportional representation system with a single transferrable vote, so out of the 8 candidates in my constituency, where 3 people will be elected (it should be 5 based on the population, but the current crowd didn’t want to correct it before this election - again, why is this not an issue?), I get to put crosses next to the ones I like and circles next to the ones I don’t like (just kidding!) rank them in order of preference. If my first choice doesn’t get in in the first round, my vote goes to my second choice, and so on. It’s great.

Anyway, I spent a lot of time weighing up which way round to place my number 1 and 2 preferences, and I’m happy with my decision. I like the Greens, and would consider myself a Green Party supporter, but I got the chance to vote for Joe Higgins, and I snapped it up. I feel it’s important to have someone in the parliament who’ll call whichever bunch of crooks get in out on their shady dealings, who believes in what he says, and who I agree with. That education should be free and secular, that women should have the right to chose how they deal with a crisis pregnancy, that energy should be from renewable sources, that the way to address anti-social behaviour is to invest in the needs of young people, that investing in public transport is the solution to the traffic crisis in Dublin etc etc etc. (I’m outing myself as a bit of a lefty here, aren’t I).

So, this morning I voted on my way to work. Voting itself is a bit of an anti-climax. You feel like it should be harder, or take longer, or at least that you should be given cake at the end of it.

And now begins the long wait to see who’s got in, and who’ll be the next Taoiseach - Golden Enda or The Cheeky Little Divil. Neither fills me with joy, but the first fills me with less dread than the second. Fingers crossed.