Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Tuesday, 2 February 2021
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government
General Scheme of Electoral Reform Bill 2020: Discussion (Resumed)
Dr. Theresa Reidy:
Again, our nearest neighbour is a very good example. It changed its registration processes in the past decade.
It moved from family registration to individual registration and experienced many teething problems regarding that. I know the Scottish section of the Electoral Commission in the UK, with which I have done work, was involved in that. They are definitely a group of people one would want to engage with around the practicalities and modalities of what worked well. Tying into some of the other bigger questions we had today, that is why one would have an electoral commission which would set the guidelines for all local authorities and be mandated for everyone. One would therefore reduce the disparities and variation that have crept into electoral administration practice.
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