The DOBlog

Category: Electoral IQ

  • Election Constituencies

    Update from McGarr Solicitors

    McGarr Solicitors have just posted an update on the Constitutional challenge to the Electoral boundaries. The case, which was to be heard today, has been adjourned on request of the Defendants. The case is now to belisted for mention again next Tuesday (8th May).

    Perhaps I am overly cynical and maybe I’m jumping at shadows but I do find it an interesting co-incidence that the Defendants sought the adjourning of this case from the day that Fianna Fail were launching their election manifesto.

    Perhaps I am seeing ill motive in otherwise innocent action given that this adjourment coincides with a week in which the Government parties have been on the back foot and have seen headline after headline tumbling out that make important things like winning an election tricky.

    Certainly it would have made life tricky for Government TDs to focus on the manifesto soundbites on the evening news if all the journos wanted to talk about was a court case about whether they had dropped the ball on protecting democracy.

    Those constituencies that are under represented based on the Census figures should consider their own version of ‘Rock the Vote’ to the tune of the classic Dire Straits track “Money for Nothing”…

    I want one more TD

    Now that I think of it, that song is eminently appropriate given the lack of clarity about the Taoiseach’s financial affairs… which may indeed be perfectly legitmate and above board. He’s just not doing a good job of convincing people that that is the case.

  • Better late then never..

    RTE today have a story about the changing demographics revealed by the Census.

    This story mentions specifically the possible need for an additional TD in Dublin West as a result of the 8000 population growth in the area that the Census shows.

    RTE have, unfortunately, failed to point out the other constituencies that are under represented and the half-dozen or so that are over represented. They do, however, make the point that the cities in Ireland (of which there are only 5) have lost population share to other areas…

    Of course this information was available in the public domain since the 29th of March and forms the basis of the Constitutional challenge to the Electoral constituency boundaries (or rather the failure of the Government to rework those boundaries in light of the census data).

  • Electoral Constituencies…

    Interesting developments (well developments at least) over in the Hight Court…

    The Constitutional challenge to the Electoral boundaries will be heard next week. This isn’t really news to those of us who have been keeping an eye on mcgarrsolicitors over the past few weeks.

    What does it mean? Well it means that any chance of calling an election this side of the middle of May is shot to hell – rumours of emergency legislation not with standing.

    I wonder what Noel Whelan of Irish Times fame makes of this attempt by citizens to exercise not just their right of free speech but also their right to have a proportionally representative election? As a barrister, political pundit and a former political organiser with Fianna Fail (see his biog at this LINK) I’m sure he’d have an opinion to express.

  • Election in the offing…

    There is an election in the offing here in Ireland. However there are (or rather should be) some concerns still about the quality of the electoral register.

    Over on the IQ Network site there is a short article about the importance of timeliness of information as a measure of its quality and accuracy..

    An important aspect of Information Quality – Timeliness
    IQ Network – the IAIDQ CoP in Ireland – Wednesday, 25 April 2007

    Also, on the Labour Party website there is a piece about issues uncovered in the door to door scrap and rework cleanup that was done late last year on the Electoral register…

    All in all I have an uneasy feeling, particularly as the fundamental root causes don’t seem to have been addressed.

  • What the…? – Irish Political coverage ignores the Elephant in the room

    I’m frankly baffled. We are in the run up to a General Election here in Ireland. All the media pundits are quoting 24th May as the date of the (as yet unannounced) election. This would require our parliament to be dissolved at the latest next week.

    Ireland runs a Proportional Representation/Single Transferable Vote system. It is built into our Consitution. There is a large body of legal opinion around the thresholds at which the ratio of elected representatives to number of people in a constituency breaches the Constitution. We are, it seems, at that point in 10 consituencies out of a total of 43. This has resulted in a Constitutional challenge in the High Court by two Independent TDs (Members of Parliament) to the holding of any election until the balance of Proportional Representation is restored through changes to the make up of Consituencies.

    The fact that key demographics had changed and there was a risk that the Electoral Constituency boundaries or numbers of representatives in each consituency might need to be altered was identified in September 2006 when the preliminary figures from our Census were published. There is no legal obligation on the Government to act or react to these however. The final Census figures were published on the 29th of March. These should be acted on or else there is the risk of any election being declared unconstitutional.

    The risk is that if the Dáil (our parliament) is dissolved prior to an election the running of which is declared unconstitutional until the parliament (the one that has been dissolved) addresses the issue of the Electoral contituencies then we could find ourselves with a bit of a governmental and Constitutional crisis.

    Yet the media continue to focus on the dog and pony show but ignore the Gorrilla in the room. The Executive arm of Government continues to barrel down the path to an election without any apparent appreciation of the risk that exists, both to the simple fact of an election and to the essence of our Constitution. Why has the existence of this Constitutional challenge not been publicised more? Why are the media giving the politicians sound-bite time to puff their agendas ahead of an election being called but they don’t ask the relevant politicians why we find ourselves at a juncture where the Constitutionality of our Electoral system is being challenged due a disproportionality in representation?

    The chronic lack of leadership and accountability on the part of the Government Minister charged with monitoring and managing how our Electoral Register and our Electoral Processes operate is shocking. However at least it is consistent with his lack of leadership and lack of willingness to be accountable for anything other than a soundbite on the news (he was going to ‘bash some heads together’ over the Galway water crisis apparently).

    To tie this back to my theme of Information Quality Management, Deming called on management to adopt a “constancy of purpose” and to wholeheartedly take on “the new philosophy” while breaking down barriers between people/organisations and driving out the fear that prevents the delivery of quality.

    Why does the relevant Minister seem to act in a manner that could only serve to drive in fear and increase the barriers that might exist that would prevent a good job being done? What is our incumbent Government’s purpose that they are constant to? What is the philosophy that they are pursuing?

    I’m off to Paddy Powers to place a bet that the Election won’t be called this side of June. Congratulations to Catherine Murphy and Finian McGrath for taking a stand on this issue.

  • First Post Anniversary… Electoral Register Processes Still Broken

    The DobBlog is 1 year old today.

    What have we achieved? Well, about 50,000 words on the state of the Irish Electoral Register, syndicated publication of an article based on those words in two International newsletters for IT/Business Intelligence professionals and a wordpress template I’m finally not unhappy with.

    The electoral register is still buggered (that’s a technical term). The scrap and rework (as predicted) was inconsistent and hasn’t fixed the underlying problems. As soon as the clean up stopped, the register has begun to drift to inaccuracy again.

    The Government continues to be cavalier about the issues involved in our electoral system… a number of constituencies will be under represented in the next Dail because of the failure of the Government to react to the population changes in the Census. That’s assuming the election can go ahead given the Constitutional challenge that has commenced.

    The understanding of the importance of good quality information and well designed processes to gather and use that information has grown however amongst a small (and growing) group of occasional visitors to the blog.

    Hopefully the next 12 months will bring enlightenment to Government on some of the issues I’ve blogged about this year and perhaps they will seek out good practices. Hopefully as well we will see some critical commentary in the media on these types of issue. I lost count of the number of pieces I submitted to Irish media during the year. My hit rate outside of Ireland this year is 2 for 2… domestically it is 0 for lots more.

  • Electoral Constituencies

    There is a bit of a bru-hahah brewing over yonder at McGarr Solicitors. It appears that their offices are acting for Finian McGrath and Catherine Murphy in their challenge to the Constitutionality of the forthcoming (but still to be announced) General Election.

    What baffles me is that in September of last year there was strong indication in the preliminary census figures that this issue might arise. That’s nearly 8 months ago. As someone who managed projects for a living I’d LOVE to have a 8 month heads up that there might be a problem with a key project I was responsible for (I’m sure m’learned colleagues over at McGarr’s will advise us with whom the buck stops for running elections in this State).

    While I accept that there may have been legal impediments to actually implementing changes on foot of the preliminary census figures I would be interested to know what prevented some form of ‘exploratory’ review to develop a contingency plan should the final figures bear out the preliminary results (which on the whole they seem to have). This would have put the Minister in the position of being able, a la Blue Peter, to present ‘one he prepared earlier’ in terms of a plan and a series of recommendations which would require updating and a lesser degree of tweaking to reflect the final census figures. I invite the team in McGarr Solicitors to comment here to advise on what the likely legal obstacles might have been to a contingency planning committee being established to look at the risk raised by the preliminary census figures and devise a set of recommendations.

    The current proposal to amend boundaries etc. after the election approximates to locking the stable door after the horse has bolted, particularly in light of the current legal challenge.

  • Scrap & Rework Article

    Many moons ago I posted a piece on this blog about Information Quality Scrap and Rework in the Irish Electoral Register. This article was submitted to a number of Irish newspapers at the time (when it was very topical) and was referenced at length by tuppenceworth and others.

    Earlier this year I was invited to write for Larry English’s column in DM Review magazine, an international trade magazine for Information Management and Business Intelligence. It appeared in the on-line ‘extended edition’ of the magazine. Here is the link to this month’s DM Review… I’m on page 5 (I’m credited as a contributor but the content appeared here first, and was picked up by B-Eye-Network last year also. For real afficianados of Irish Electoral Register issues, here’s a link to the paper I wrote on the issue back in the dim and distant past.

    Thanks to Larry and his staff for helping with a minor re-write to make the article more ‘American-friendly’. (Larry’s profile that I’ve linked to above is from the IAIDQ website – www.iaidq.org)

  • Electoral Reg (A slight return)

    OK. In an attempt to make this interesting to the kids, I’m ripping off Jimi Hendrix lyrics.

    The Sunday Business Post reported over the weekend that up to 170,000 people may have been taken of the Electoral Register in error. Apparently politicians of all hues are trading war stories of bungled clean ups on the electoral register. Apparently, amongst other things, entire housing estates have been taken off the register and dead people have resurrected and re-registered to vote. The Minister in question, Dick Roche, has even had to acknowledge that he knows of an incident of a disappearing housing estate in Wicklow (wouldn’t it be ironic if it was up on Turlough Hill muses the author, mixing his Irish geography).

    The Fianna Faíl TD for Meath, Johnny Brady, has commented that:

    • huge numbers of elderly voters have been removed from the Register in his area
    • no letters were left to inform people they were being taken off the Register (or at least people don’t recall getting such a letter).

    According to Mr Brady “Some of the field officers who called to houses decided that if they were not at home, they were taken off”. This suggests a degree of inconsitency in the approaches between local authorities… in my earlier post on when the people came knocking I pointed out that they hadn’t spoken to me, but as of today I’m still on the Register. Therefore it would seem that different rules are being applied in Meath and Wexford.

    Divergences in work practices in maintaining the Register is one of the contributing root causes to the whole original mess. Anecdotes of Local Authorities using the Obituraries in the local and national papers to identify dead people were mentioned in dispatches not so long ago.

    And the treatment of the dead is clearly one of the key root causes for the original shambles… with 30% of Waterford’s voters being members of the daisy pushing brigade. Of course, this discrepancy is matched by the inconsistency between the numbers on the register now and the population as measured by the Census.

    Good grief. What a mess.

    Way back in the summer I wrote that the proposal to rebuild the register by going door to door would not address the actual deficiencies in the register. The key approach should have been to tackle the root causes – such as wildly varying work practices in different local authority areas and then to push out cleansing of the register. This should have been done in a clear and transparent manner.

    However, at this point it is important to bear in mind that often the answer you get to a problem isn’t necessarily the answer you want. The Opposition parties seem to have had an expectation that there would be no collateral damage in the clean up of the register. A cliche involving eggs, omlettes and breakage springs to mind. Rather than engage in debate based on anecdote the Opposition parties should try to ‘speak with data’ and to identify clear examples of where people have been taken off the register in error and get evidence of what process or inaction on the part of the Minister or Local Authorities lead to the error.

    For example, Gay (Gabriel) Mitchell (Fine Gael TD) reported his personal experience where he wrote to the Local Authority officers responsible for the Register to tell them that there were two people resident at his address with the same name (his son is also called Gabriel). However only one Gabriel Mitchell was left on the Register. Why? Did Deputy Mitchell forget to include the respective dates of birth? Did his letter fall through the cracks?

    Dick Roche attempted to clean the register by running en masse a broken process. Throwing people at it to perform door to door checks did not address key root causes (like the fact that you can’t change your name on the Electoral Registration form – it only allows for changes of address). When you throw into the mix that the door to door checkers:

    1. Don’t hang around long enough to talk to people (in my personal experience)
    2. Call during the day when people are at work (might that explain why entire estates in the commuter belt of Dublin have disappeared off the Register?)
    3. Seem to have an inconsistent practice as to how to deal with people who don’t answer the door

    then this whole process is a phenomonal white elephant that may have served to make a bad situation slightly worse.

    However – with regard to people who have been taken off the Register in error… there is a question of personal responsibilty here. If they wish to be registered to vote then they should check the register at their local libraries or Garda stations or online (if they are in the 50.7% of people who have internet access) and get themselves registered.

    If you are not in you can’t win. If you’re not on the register you can’t complain about the government you get. And by my reckoning that’s what we have at the moment.

  • Electoral Register… a reprise

    Bertie Ahern has waded into the fray on the Electoral Register issue.

    Some of his comments are, in my personal experience, bizarre. For example, he says “There are still some people who did not answer the door when people called“. I was working from home the day the people called. During the day. When normally my wife and I would be at work. But I was working from home. So when the door bell rang I walked from the kitchen to the hall door (about 30 feet).

    By the time I got to the door, the callers were walking out of my driveway to the next house. Total time on doorstep was about 15 seconds. I stood at the door, with the door open, for about five minutes as they walked around my estate. Surprisingly very few people were in when they called, during the day, in an housing estate inhabited by commuters and people who work. Even though I was standing in plain view and to get out of my cul-de-sac they had to walk right past me on the way out none of them thought to stop and ask me anything. So even though I was in, we’re probably logged as a no answer. However, we never received a letter from the Local Authority to verify any of our details.

    “If people refuse to check the website”… don’t get me started on the bias in that statement. According to the ITU (International Telecommunications Union), Ireland ranks 32nd on the top 32 countries for Internet penetration. As of Sept 2006, the ITU puts us at 50.7% penetration… just behind such technological hotbeds as Estonia (no offence to people from Estonia). Many of those who don’t have Internet access are in the less well off social demographics, the ones most needing effective representation so their interests are met in Government policy. Is it a case of ‘refusing’ to check the website or is it a case of being unable to check the website? For people to be criticised for not following a process, they have to be actually able to follow that process. For shame Taoiseach, for shame.

    Of course the Bert is correct..  you can’t force people to go on the Register. And the efforts by the Opposition to point to the removal of people ‘in error’ as being grounds for legal action and a ‘very bad thing’ is, to be honest, somewhat lazy opposing. Given the methodology that was being deployed it was inevitable that some people would be taken off the Register and there has to be an element of personal responsibility here which should compel people to get off their couches and, if they don’t have internet access to go to their local library and check the Register to make sure they’re on it and get their name on before the deadline.

    What the Opposition should be focussing on is the absence of any real leadership or activity to address the obviously broken processes that have allowed the Register to get to the state it is in. They should be looking to the cost of non-quality here (how much extra has it cost to do the clean-up, what is the plan to address root causes and avoid that cost in future). For example, could the fact that remain on the Register indefinitely and do not have to re-register periodically be a possible root cause? What about the fact that you can’t change your name on the register without risking being registered twice as the only form available only allows you to change your address.

    The fact that at in at least one Local Authority the Obituary pages of the papers were being used to remove deceased persons because they were unaware that they could get the information from the Central Registrations Office is astonishing. What else is going on under the covers?

    That would show leadership and credibility in an opposition that should be showing its credentials as planners for the future rather than pursuers of trivial non-issues, collateral damage in pursuit of the objective which was to remove people from the Register to reduce the risk of spurious voter registrations being used to pervert the outcome of the next election.

    As it stands, I’m left having to agree with much of Bertie’s defence of Dick Roche. It disturbs me that I can’t find greater affinity with the Opposition on this issue.

    The current cleanup will not solve the problem. Personal responsibility to ensure you are registered is not obviated by Government actions. Just because the tools are on the Internet does not mean that people can use them. Deletion of valid voters is a risk in any Electoral Register clean up – the issue is if there is a mechanism that is sufficiently publicised for people to get re-registered. And an Opposition that wants us to see them as potential Government need to attack something meatier than a the non-issue of collateral damage and should target the fundamental lack of vision that seems to underpin the Government’s approach to this whole issue.