Facts about Politics in Ireland

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Proper Name: Ireland
Government: Republic, democratically elected by proportional representation.
Independence: From UK by treaty, declared 21 January 1919; recognised: 6 December 1921
Capital City: Dublin
Administrative Divisions: 26 counties which are: Carlow, Cavan, Clare, Cork, Donegal, Dublin, Galway, Kerry, Kildare, Kilkenny, Laois, Leitrim, Limerick, Longford, Louth, Mayo, Meath, Monaghan, Offaly, Roscommon, Sligo, Tipperary, Waterford, Westmeath, Wexford, Wicklow
Head of State: President, currently Mary McAleese
Head of Government (Taoiseach): Bertie Ahern
Main Political Parties: Fianna Fail, Fine Gael, Labour, Progressive Democrats, Green Party, Sinn Fein, Socialist Party.
National Holiday: St Patrick's Day, March 17th.
National Emblem: The harp (no, not the shamrock!)

Understanding Proportional Representation

Ireland's National Flag Irish Flag, the TricolourBoy does proportional representation confuse those unfamiliar with it!

In Ireland it has made elections fascinating occasions, almost akin to a blood sport at times, as the last seats are fought over fiercly and often won by incredibly thin margins.

Irish people will talk politics forever and relish a good arguement on the subject! There is no doubt that proportional representation gives them plenty to talk about at election time.

Multi-seat Constituencies & Transferrable Votes

To understand the system, there are first two things that need to be clear:

All constituencies are multi-seat constituences, each electing between 3 and 5 candidates depending on their size. That is, voters choose from a list of candidates and the 3-5 receiveing the most votes are elected.
Every voter has a single, transferrable, vote. This means they vote for candidates in order of preference, giving a number 1 to their favourite, 2 to their next choice, 3 to the next and so on. They are not obliged to vote for more than one person but can if they wish indicate their preferrences in numerical order right down an entire list of maybe 20-30 candidates.

To those accumstomed to a single seat, first past the post system, this seems very complex. Well, actually it is very complex when it comes to counting the votes!

Setting the Quota

Once all the votes have been cast, the first task is to count the number of valid votes in order to set a 'quota'. This is the number of votes that a candidate will need in order to be elected.

In a first past the post system, this is simply one vote more than 50% of the valid poll, but with multi-seat constiuencies it is a little different. Instead the total number of votes is divided by the number of seats available, and then 1 vote is added to come up with a quota.

Thus in a constituency with 5 seats, where 125,000 votes were cast, the quota would be 125,000 divided by 5 plus 1, or 25,001 votes.

Counting the Votes

Votes are counted not once but several times in a series of counts.

The First Count

Votes are divided according to the first preference indicated in them. There are two possible outcomes at the end of the first count:

One or more canditates reach a quota and are elected
No canditate reaches a quota

These both affect how votes are counted subsequently.

The Second Count

If a candidate has been elected, their surplus votes, that is any votes over the quota, are now redistributed among the remaining candidates according to the voters second preferrence.

The surplus votes are chosen at random. For example if a candidate had 800 votes more than required to meet the quota, then 800 voting papers would be chosen at random from their total votes to be redistributed.

If no candidate reaches a quota, the candidate with the least number of votes is eliminated and all of their votes are redistributed according to second preferrences.

Again, at the end of the second count there are the same two possible outcomes:

One or more canditates reach a quota and are elected
No canditate reaches a quota

Subsequent Counts

The process contines as above though several counts, with the votes of those elected and/or those with least votes being redistributed. This can often continue though 10, 20 or even more counts.

In the end stages there will often be candidates who are elected without reaching a quota, simply because the end has been reached, only two candidates remain and there are no votes left to be redistributed.

Clear?

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