Labour councillor gets permission to challenge Seanad elections vote count
High Court reporters
A Kildare county councillor who was a candidate in the Seanad elections has been given High Court permission to present a petition challenging the conduct of the counting of votes for the agricultural .
Angela Feeney, a member of the Labour Party's central council and former head of the school of languages, law and social sciences at the Technological University Dublin, claims there should have been a full recount rather than of only the 23rd count when she was eliminated.
She wants the results overturned and a recount ordered.
On Friday, Conor Power SC, with Hugh McDowell BL, for Cllr Feeney, applied ex parte (only Feeney side represented) to Mr Justice Micheál P O'Higgins for leave to bring the petition.
Séamus Clarke SC told the court he was holding a watching brief on behalf of the general secretary of the Labour Party in relation to the application.
The judge said he was satisfied the threshold had been met for the granting of leave to bring the petition.
He said the proceedings could be served on clerk of the Seanad who was also the returning officer, on the other candidates, the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage and on the Attorney General.
The case comes back at the end of the month.
Cllr Feeney said in an affidavit that only the 23rd count was recounted and that she and her agents were not allowed to be present at this.
She said the difference between her and the next candidate, Fine Gael’s Maria Byrne, was a margin of .116, or one-ninth, of a ballot.
The reason this can be calculated is that in Seanad elections, each valid ballot paper is deemed to have a value of 1,000 votes which meant that the total valid poll for the agricultural was 95,667 votes.
While candidates and agents are entitled to be present at the counting of the first preferences, all subsequent counts were carried out "at such a remove from those present that they could not see the votes being counted", she said.
She requested a full recount but the returning officer declined to do so.
She claims that even a single minor human error could have had a significant impact on the sequence of events and/or the ultimate outcome in the 11-member agricultural election.
If any preference in her favour on a ballot paper was not correctly attributed to her or if any preference was wrongly attributed to Maria Byrne, it is likely that she would have been elected and not Ms Byrne, she said.
The failure to carry out a full recount amounted to evidence, on its face, of a "mistake or other irregularity which is likely to have affected the result of the election" within the meaning of the Electoral Acts, it is claimed.
She also said the fact that the counts, subsequent to the first preferences, were "effectively conducted in private" may have been to protect he identity of the voter as it appears that a number on the back of the ballot paper must, under the rules, be protected from view.
However, these attempts to avoid the potentiality of voter identification had the consequence of breaching oversight of the counting of the votes, she said.
She believes the the counting of the votes in this manner was wholly unsatisfactory and not in accordance with the 1947 Electoral Act.
She also said that what occurs in the Seanad elections is not what happens in Dail and council elections where candidates and agents can see all the counting.
Mr Power, in his submissions, said the entitlement to a full recount is enjoyed in Dáil elections as a result of a change in the law but it had not been changed in relation to the Seanad.
He also said that Joe Costello, who held a Labour seat for more than 20 years, had also sworn an affidavit stating that the venue for the count was not conducive to transparency. There was an awareness of this as the clerk of the Seanad had sought an alternative venue but none was available, Mr Costello said.
