Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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We talked about spoiling the vote and educating and helping people so they do not spoil their vote. Although the rules have become a lot clearer on what is and is not acceptable, there is a lot less debate when it comes to the scrutinising at count centres of votes that are questionable. I came across one example recently, which was demoralising, where ballot papers had not been stamped properly but had gone into the ballot box. There could have been up to five of these in a row. We are not allowed to be informed of what booth or polling station those came from, but the returning officer has that information. Does the returning officer ever point out to those involved that the station was an outlier and ask what happened? Is it just a fact of human error, that when doing repetitive tasks, they just forget and it does not get stamped? Is that generally the cause of that?