Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

Imove amendment No. 51:

In page 45, between lines 32 and 33, to insert the following: "(2) The Commission shall:

(a) produce radio, TV and online advertisements to promote participation in electoral events;

(b) maintain a website and social media platforms dedicated to voter education and awareness;

(c) provide training and voter education programmes;

(d) engage with schools, colleges and other educational institutions to enhance voter education and voter participation among young people;

(e) employ youth advocates to increase voter participation and awareness among young people;

(f) proactively and regularly engage in outreach to minority communities and under-represented groups to ensure barriers to participation are removed;

(g) produce educational materials and resources that explain the PRSTV voting system, how to run for election and other relevant matters;

(h) ensure that all its materials are provided in an accessible and easy to read format;

(i) ensure that all its materials are translated to Irish Sign Language so that they are accessible to deaf people;

(j) ensure that all its materials are accessible to people who are blind or vision impaired;

(k) ensure that all election and educational materials are produced in various languages and formats;

(l) run targeted awareness campaigns aimed at improving voter engagement among people with disabilities, including but not limited to, promoting options such as postal voting;

(m) monitor and implement international best practice in terms of voter education and voter participation;

(n) provide support and resources to other state bodies and non-governmental organisations engaged in voter education;

(o) after each electoral event provide a detailed report to the Joint Oireachtas Committee and the Minister on the voter education and awareness measures undertaken for that election;

(p) undertake any other measures and steps that increase awareness and participation.".

Notwithstanding the Chairman's introduction to my amendment, which includes a substantial list in terms of voter education, I spoke at some length on Second Stage on the importance of voter education in the 132 pages of this Bill. Voter education is a significant part of the remit for the commission. It is extremely important. Voter participation is also massively important. In the 132 pages of the Bill, voter education is only mentioned twice.

Section 66, which relates to the educational functions of the commission, is very weak. It is just three sentences long. I appreciate that legislation is not all about length or the number of times something is mentioned, and there can be good legislation where particular functions are crisp and short. However, I fear that if we do not spell out in the legislation in some detail what should be done under voter education, this is an area that may not get the resources or the prioritisation that is needed. We have to design the legislation to withstand time so while I fully appreciate the Minister of State is highly committed to electoral reform and the different aspects of the Bill, we have to design the legislation in case he is replaced by someone who has no interest in this. The legislation has to be robust enough to withstand that.

As I said on Second Stage, we all know from election counts of the effect of lack of voter education, information or awareness about how the process works. We can see it when the ballot boxes are opened and, particularly in some parts of constituencies, we see a very high level of unintentionally spoiled votes. While people absolutely have a right to spoil a vote, we see people doing it unintentionally because they are giving three first preferences or making three ticks. They go to vote and feel they are casting a vote and having their say, but they are unaware that having gone to all that effort and gone through all of that process, their vote is invalidated. They are not aware of that at all. It is a significant number of ballot papers. In any given constituency, there can be a few hundred spoiled votes and, out of that, more than 100 can easily be unintentionally spoiled. The lack of strong voter education in Ireland is a big problem.

In New Zealand, which is a very good model in the context of electoral commissions, the electoral commission has youth advocates who drive up voter registration levels among younger people, it has outreach to people who are homeless, it has very accessible social media and easy to follow videos, it has enabled deaf and hard of hearing people to use sign language when voting and facilitated people who are blind to use a telephone dictation voting service, and it has facilitated early voting to increase turnout. It has a range of measures that are really healthy in terms of democracy and that are a good model for our commission.

This amendment seeks to put a bit of flesh on voter education in the Bill so that if there is a Government or Minister in the future who has less interest in this, the electoral commission will be strongly supported through this Bill to carry out very good voter education. Given that voter education has not had the priority and the resources put into it in this country to date that it deserves, and given how important democracy is, I do not think we can assume that will be the case, so we need to make sure this part of the Bill is as strong as possible. If the Minister of State feels changes are needed to the wording I have put forward or that one or two parts of it are objectionable or problematic, I have no issue with that, but I feel this part of the Bill needs to be strengthened. If the Minister of State is not accepting it in full, I ask that he would at least look to bring forward something similar on Report Stage to capture a lot of this.