Mr. Noel Whelan:

I hope the approach in my submission reflects what the Chairman has suggested. The electoral commission's first function would be to bang heads together of the 31 local authorities and get them to compare notes and databases and then take those databases and compare them to the databases of the Revenue and the Department of Social Protection. Sometimes it is just a database management and integration process. A national body would have the power to insist that be done. Simultaneously, as a national body it would run a national campaign in the autumn to encourage those voting for the first time or those who have moved area to register to vote at that stage so that they would not be caught up in the supplementary register process. Those two steps alone could deliver a marked improvement and give confidence to the electoral commission to take on the broader task, if that is appropriate, and to the public and politicians that somebody is now responsible. This comes back to the point made by the former Member, Mr. Jim O'Keeffe. One of the difficulties that I see as an amateur expert in this area is the lack of expertise about the system. The best expertise about the system is among the politicians in this House but by their very nature they are biased. That is fair enough. One cannot have the players being the referee as well. There is no group whose job and life work, day by day is to compare how things are done in Australia and New Zealand and other comparable places looking at what is best and tweaking the system accordingly. This is where I emphasise that technology can be a great help to the electoral process. It also brings me back to Deputy Coonan's question about compulsory voting.

I would not go as far as recommending compulsory voting but there is a great deal more that could be done to encourage voting. One of the campaigning groups for the marriage referendums in which I was involved ran a campaign called "Get me to the Vote on time" . All the research from the referendums, in particular, shows that about one third to 40% of people did not vote on the day because it was not practically convenient for them. Sometimes that is an excuse, sometimes it is real. They do not think through where the polling station is located, the hours the polling station opens and closes and whether they would vote before going to work or, because it is Friday, after they go for a pint, which cannot be done. One of the campaigns was directed at getting people to register on the previous Friday so that they would think about Friday, 22 May and where they would be, and what would be involved in getting to the polling station. Again my point is that an independent electoral commission that was proactively engaged in communicating with the public would see that as part of its function so as to encourage voting rather than necessarily making it compulsory. Text message reminders were used, not because the text message reminded the individual to go to vote but by registering for the text message at the time one indicated one would vote, forces the person to think about the following Friday and the possible calls on one's time. It is all about using best practice and modern technologies by a group that has the remit and the expertise to make elections work better.