Voting registration deadline falls at 5pm Tuesday

Organisers of voting registration drives have said last year’s same-sex marriage referendum turnout will have the knock-on effect of increasing participation in the general election.

The voter registration deadline falls on Tuesday, February 9th, with those eager to cast their ballot able to register through local authorities by close of business, 5pm.

A final push has been aimed at young people who have not yet registered, although the Union of Students Ireland (USI) has processed almost 40,000 individual forms in the last 16 months.

Its president Kevin Donoghue said much of the momentum began with last year’s marriage referendum, expected to fuel a surge in student voting later this month.

“It’s becoming very hard to find people who are not registered,” he said.

“We are in a space now where students can no longer be considered an unregistered group.

“If you are in a group of friends and you are not registered to vote, you are the odd one out now whereas before it would have been the other way around.”

College campuses have been running registration drives over the last year. Mr Donoghue said the referendum had the effect of demonstrating the impact of an individual vote, something not as visible in the aftermath of general elections.

Sr Bernadette Mac Mahon, director of the Vincentian Partnership for Social Justice, agreed. The partnership runs vote.ie and has been facilitating information workshops for the last 20 years, mainly by groups from marginal communities.

This year it has worked with Traveller organisations and groups from disadvantaged areas, among others.

“We were kept very busy during the marriage equality referendum. We had so many young people registering, and they wouldn’t be the biggest turnout in elections. As a result there will be more people voting [this month],” she said.

‘Very disempowering’

“When you are from a disadvantaged area and you get politicians who make promises and people get nothing out of them, that can be very disempowering.

“People sometimes don’t vote because they are so disillusioned with what’s happening in the country. But we try to get it across to them that the areas that have a higher voter turnout do better when it comes to allocating resources.”

The overall trend in voter registration can be difficult to quantify, with application numbers processed and collated by individual local authorities.

Yesterday, Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council in South Dublin reported an additional 3,200 registrations over last year.

Cork County Council said they had received a “large” but unspecified number of forms in keeping with previous general elections.

Newly eligible voters

On Monday, the National Youth Council of Ireland (NYCI) issued a reminder to 59,000 newly eligible voters to ensure they were registered by Tuesday’s deadline.

Those wishing to vote can download an RFA2 form at checktheregister.ie, have it stamped by gardaí and return it to their local authority by 5pm.

Anyone wishing to ensure their details and address are up to date can do so through the same website.

Gordon Rose, co-founder of smartvote.ie, a website that enables users to closely identify their ideal candidate by answering 30 questions on key issues, said the service had recorded 50,000 users in the run-up to the election.

“The interest is there and people are hungry to find out the issues and hungry to find out about the candidates,” he said.

The Rock the Vote campaign was also launched on Monday, using social media and gigs to urge people from migrant backgrounds to take part in this month’s vote.