Electoral IQ

Something’s wrong – I find myself agreeing (in general) with a PD

http://www.progressivedemocrats.ie/press_room/1812/ Senator Minihan makes a good deal of sense in his speech to the Seanad (Irish Senate, second house of our executive). His is the closest I have seen in the debates and coverage thus far to an apolitical statement of purpose. Also, he has touched on a number of potential root causes for the …

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Excel – some noteworthy c*ckups…

The nice people over at the European Spreadsheet Risks Interest Group have an excellent website with good examples of spreadsheets gone wrong. Here’s one about sorting errors… And another… here And another… here and another… here and another … here and another… here (this one relates to electoral roll data) and another… here Some of these …

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Finger print scanning and Indelible Ink in the Electoral Process

I have been distracted from compiling my post on the use of excel as a data interchange mechanism by some other snippets of what Dick Roche said at yesterday’s Dail committee meeting as reported in the Irish Times (page 9) and Dublin’s freesheet Metro (page 5)… The Census Enumerators haven’t gone away… €5 million to €6 million …

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Electoral Register on Oireachtas Report

The coverage of the Dail Committee meeting on Oireachtas Report this evening was a little disappointing. They only covered the Minister’s speechifying on the topic and didn’t show if there had been any debate or challenge on the topic from any of the Opposition politicians who sit on the Committee such as Labour’s Eamon Gilmore. …

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Dail Committee Discussion on Electoral Register issues

There is a Dail Committee discussion on the Electoral Register issue being held this afternoon at 16:15. The Minister for the Environment will be facing questioning on what is being done to fix our shambles of an electoral register. According to the published schedule, this discussion is to be televised. I’m not sure exactly where on …

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Electoral Information Quality – A Consolidating post

As the blog is getting legs a bit now, I thought it best to consolidate the posts of the last few weeks on the Electoral Register issues into one point of reference, particularly for readers new to the site. I am also taken the opportunity to upload a few additional articles etc. that I have written on …

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The Irish Times Editorial yesterday…

The Irish Times ran a nice editorial piece yesterday (2006/05/11) on the Electoral Register that highlighted the administrative failure that surrounds the Electoral Register. One good line: “IF the potential for abouse exists within the voting system – and it unequivocally does – the Government’s responsibility is to protect democracy and correct the electoral register” …

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Link to my comments on tuppenceworth..

Those nice punters concerned citizens over at Tuppenceworth have taken up cudgels in defence of democracy and quoted from my post explaining scrap and rework to explain to their readers why they should prepare for a feeling of dé ja et ré ja vú… (french for “I’ve been here before, and I’ll be here again”). …

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Reponse to Damien Blakes’ post on irishelection.com

Damien Blake written a good piece on IrishElection.com regarding his view on how to address the Electoral Register. Much of what he says has merit as a short term solution. He suggests that we scrap the register (no problem there) and rework it from scratch (again, no problem there) rather than limp on with a defective …

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