The vote-counting process in Ireland’s local elections has begun. A day after voters headed to the polls in three highly anticipated elections, the ballot boxes were opened at 9am on Saturday. Irish people voted to elect a swathe of new councillors as well as picking candidates to send to the European Parliament and, for the first time, some were asked to decide on a directly electing a mayor to represent them locally. With the boxes open, the ballot papers for each election must first be separated out by count staff in centres across the nation – which is expected to take some hours – before they are officially counted. The local government elections will be sorted and counted first, before the papers in the European and Limerick mayoral elections are counted on Sunday and Monday respectively. For the count, the ballot papers will be sorted based on first-preference votes, with spoilt votes separated from the piles. Spoilt votes are those which are deemed illegible because there are multiple first preference votes or they have been defaced with messages. To win a seat in a local authority, candidates have to meet the required quota of votes, which is calculated by dividing the total valid poll by one more than the number of available seats, and then adding one. The separate elections come at a febrile time in Irish politics dominated by discussion on a housing crisis, the cost of living and migration. The coalition partnership of Fine Gael, Fianna Fail and the Green Party has been battling criticism domestically and on the continent over other issues including climate action, agriculture policy and defence co-operation in the EU. The eagerly awaited polls will provide political parties with concrete evidence of voter sentiment, having had to wait more than four years since the last nationwide elections. In the intervening years since the last general election, politicians have had to rely on newspaper opinion polls to gauge the mood of the nation. The main takeaway of the 2020 campaign was a massive upswing in support for Sinn Fein, which took away almost a quarter of the popular vote. To leader Mary Lou McDonald’s regret, this was unrealised potential as the party was still left in opposition after failing to run a sufficient number of candidates in the parliamentary constituencies. Since then, estimated support for Sinn Fein hovered above 30% for a long time – even temporarily reaching highs of around 35%. However, opinion polls over the last eight months suggest that support for the party is on a dramatic slide – as independents eat up more of the expected vote share. Many of the ballot papers across the elections contain a large number of independents with a variety of political leanings, several of whom have been described as anti-immigrant. For a protracted period of time, Ireland has continued to fail to provide accommodation for all asylum seekers. There have been several anti-migrant protests across the State and buildings earmarked to accommodate refugees have been damaged in suspected arson attacks. Also of note, Fine Gael appears to have had somewhat of a “Harris hop” in the polls following the shock resignation of Leo Varadkar as leader of the party earlier this year, leading to Simon Harris taking over that position as well as the role of Irish premier. The results of the three campaigns may be instructive for the overall state of the parties – and could potentially direct Mr Harris’ decision on when to call the next general election, which must be held by March next year. Millions of residents were eligible to vote in Friday’s local elections. There are 31 local government bodies in Ireland. Each county and city council is divided into local electoral areas with a specified number of council seats to be filled in the election. In total, there are 166 electoral areas in Ireland and each of them elects a number of councillors. The number of councillors to be elected nationally is 949. These representatives are tasked with making policy decisions at local level including on planning and community development. At the same time, EU citizens registered in Ireland were eligible to vote for 14 Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) across three varied constituencies: Dublin, South, and Midlands-North-West. The MEPs are responsible for debating EU-wide legislation and working on the budget for the bloc. The local and European elections are held every five years. In the south west of the country, voters in Limerick city and county had the opportunity to directly elect a mayor. From now on, this vote will also take place every five years. The successful candidate will be considered the region’s first citizen and will have unique executive powers around long-term strategic planning, including measures on housing delivery, road infrastructure and environmental measures. They can serve a maximum of two terms, each lasting five years. There are 15 candidates vying for the new job – which carries a salary of approximately 150,000 euro. Voting came to an end at 10pm on Friday, but the results will take days to be finalised. The role is seen as a test case for further rollout at other local authorities in the future. Ballots in the local elections will be sorted straight away on Saturday but results in the European election cannot be declared until after all EU states have finished polling – which will not happen until late on Sunday night. Counting in the mayoral election is expected to begin on Monday. Even then, Ireland uses a system of proportional representation which allows voters to rank every candidate in each race by order of preference. Candidates must reach a certain quota of votes in order to be deemed elected. In the likely event that not enough candidates are above this threshold following the first count, hopefuls with the least amount of votes are eliminated and their votes are redistributed based on the further preferences on the ballot papers. The same occurs when a candidate is elected with a “surplus” of votes. It means the paper ballots in each election, which are filled out with pencil or pens, are sorted and counted multiple times by hand. The entire process is expected to last days.
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