Commission says electronic vote counting may be needed

The electronic counting of votes could be considered for future elections if the trend of large numbers of candidates on ballot papers continues.

There were marathon counts for the European elections which took place in June. In the Midlands North West Constituency, where there were 27 names on the ballot paper, it took five days for the full results to be known.

Chief Executive of the Electoral Commission, Art O'Leary, has told an Oireachtas Committee that ballot papers "the length of toilet rolls" caused a number of difficulties.

He said he did not believe there was an appetite for electronic voting, but that electronic counting is something that could be considered.

Addressing members of the Joint Committee on Housing and Local Government, Mr O' Leary said an electronic counting system has recently been introduced in Malta, which has a similar electoral system to Ireland.

The system is "even more transparent because they take a photograph of every single ballot paper," he told TDs and Senators.

"I am having a look at that, and I spoke to the company that installed this for them as well. It is not something for today or tomorrow, but perhaps down the line if this persists as a problem and there isn't any viable solution from a ballot-paper design perspective, it is something that we might have a look at," he said.

Mr O'Leary said the other solution would be to make it harder to get on the ballot paper "which I don't think anyone has an appetite for" or to increase the number of people working at count centres, which would not be viable from a recruitment point of view.

The Committee also heard concerns about potential difficulties in hiring staff at polling stations because of the long hours, pay rates and short notice involved in general elections.

The Dublin City Returning Officer, Joseph Burke, said around 1,200 personnel have to be recruited for 125 polling stations in the five constituencies in Dublin City.

He said poll clerks typically earn €220 for the day which can last up to 16 hours, and he is hopeful this rate can be increased. "People would say: 'I worked for you previously, but I'm not prepared to work again because I don't think it's worth my time based on what I got in take home pay'," he told the Committee.

Mr Burke said returning officers have been planning for the next general election since the Local and European elections concluded in June, but the short notice for a Dáil election is nonetheless "challenging".

He said: "The biggest difficulty is securing the count centre. If you are trying to book a count centre you need to be able to give people dates for when the count is going to take place, and if you are only getting three or four weeks' notice it is a significant issue," he said.

"Certainly, at the moment it is causing me a little bit of anxiety," he said. "We manage it, and we have never had a situation where we haven't been able to get a count centre, but it is a challenge."

The Electoral Commission also said the use of posters during campaigns will be examined.

"On the one hand there are environmental issues. On the other, there are many academics who feel very strongly that there are a vast swathe of people who do not know that elections are coming until they see posters on lamp-posts," Mr O'Leary said.

"But it is not either a feast or famine. There are many countries where they adopt a process where you cannot put posters all over a constituency - there are certain parts of a town or village where postering is banned. Or you could introduce a cap on the number of posters, saying it's 200 or 250 rather than a thousand, when there is no limit right now."

There will be a public consultation on the issue, he said, "but it does appear that Irish people like election posters".