‘Our election system is as good as it gets’, says Cork county returning officer

Cork county returning officer Sinead McNamara jokes that the lack of a referendum will make her life easier on Friday, with approximately 300 polling places across Ireland’s largest county for the European and local elections.

It is still a daunting logistical exercise of democracy in action.

A referendum had been planned for Friday — on Ireland’s participation in the Unified Patent Court — but after the defeat in the March referendums on family and care, the Government postponed it.

“On June 7, my role is to facilitate the taking of the poll; that’s to set up the various count centres across Cork county,” says Ms McNamara, noting that the city has its own count centre in City Hall, and its own returning officer.

“You’ll go into the polling station, there will be one ballot box, you will be given two papers, not three now, by my staff: A local paper and a European paper. You will cast your votes and put both papers into the same box.

“When the boxes, then, are brought into the count centre in Mallow on Friday night, they’re kept there overnight, with security, with a Garda presence.

“The count centre is sealed until I return on the Saturday morning with the count staff, and the count will start at 9am.”

Turnout

Every presiding officer is required to fill out a ballot-paper that will record the number of ballot papers they are allotted, and that is determined by the number of people on the , allowing for a theoretical 100% turnout.

A full turnout never happens, so a certain amount of papers will be unused, and some people will make errors before casting their ballot, being legitimately allowed to ask for another ballot paper, and the first paper will not be cast, but will be ed for. However, once a ballot paper is put in the box, there is no change of mind.

“The box cannot be opened by anyone except for me and my staff on count day,” Ms McNamara says.

“On one occasion, an engagement ring went into the box, and the engagement ring had to stay there.”

When the ballot box was opened the next day, the ring was retrieved and reunited with its owner after an anxious wait.

When the boxes are opened on Saturday morning at the count centre in Mallow, the papers will be separated into local and European ballots, and then the number of papers will be verified against the ballot-paper .

“More often than not, they tally; sometimes they may be out by one or two,” Ms McNamara says, explaining that occasionally people decide not to vote after getting their paper, or even get chatting and forget to vote. Once that verification is complete, the local ballots are sorted between their respective areas — Cork East, Cork Northwest, and Cork Southwest — and packaged and sent to their relevant local-authority count centre.

Army

The European ballot papers are then brought by the army to the European count centre at Nemo Rangers GAA Club, where the count will begin at 9am on Sunday.

Polling day can be extremely long for staff, starting before 7am and running until well after polls close at 10pm, with no break for lunch.

“There are comfort breaks, and, if it’s quiet, and the place you’re in has facilities, you can make a cup of tea,” Ms McNamara says, “but under no circumstances can you leave to get food, so you’ll see lots of mammies calling in with sandwiches, or people will order in food.”

Of the count itself, Ms McNamara says it is democracy at its most transparent.

“Everything is being done in full sight of everyone, and that’s absolutely the way it should be.

“I think there’s a good degree of faith in the process, and in the integrity of the process. But, at the end of the day, counting is done by people, and that means there can be scope for human error.”

Recounts can happen, especially in local elections, where the margins can be very small.

Ms McNamara says she has never had a recount, and she touches the table as she says it.

The Cork County Council recounts of May, 2019, come to mind, when four days and two recounts gave Holly McKeever Cairns, as she was then, the final seat in Bantry West by a single vote, flipping the original count, which had deemed Independent candidate Finbarr Harrington elected by the same margin.

Spoiled

Sometimes, ballot papers can be deemed spoiled, which is at the discretion of the returning officer.

Ms McNamara says: “Votes can be invalid for four different reasons: The first is if the paper doesn’t indicate a preference, and that happens quite a lot; Another category is where more than one preference is indicated.

“You’d be amazed the amount of people, particularly in a referendum, they’ll tick both boxes.”

Sometimes, a paper may not have been stamped by the presiding officer, meaning it’s not valid. The final category is where the voter has written something on the paper that identifies them.

“Personally, I take a fairly strong view that nothing should be written on a paper,” she says, but adds that sometimes people will have scribbled out a tick and written something like “not this”, which is something she says she would allow.

What if someone writes, say, “Eff FF” or “Eff FG”?

“Personally, I would invalidate that.

“There’s a count staff of 250 people, and there’s nothing to stop someone from saying, ‘You’ll know my ballot, I wrote whatever on it’, and then they know that’s so-and-so’s ballot.”

Protest vote

At the last referendums, she says, there was “an awful lot of ‘just don’t understand’ on both papers”, which she says she would see as a genuine protest vote.

When it comes to spoiled ballots, Ms McNamara has an interesting policy.

“Do you know the way sometimes you’ll hear: ‘He was a bad referee, but he was equally bad for both sides’?”

As to the system we have of proportional representation and its long-winded, often finnicky count process, Ms McNamara repeats her point that it is democracy at its most transparent.

“When you compare it to other jurisdictions, is it perfect? No, but I think it’s as good as it gets at the moment, unless a better alternative comes along at some point,” Ms McNamara says.