Voting Abroad: The Journey of a Young Voter’s Experience
By Chloe Jacob
Friday 08 November, 2024 – 16:53
Its official – the Dáil has dissolved. It is that time again to get out and vote. I can imagine the posters being pasted up and promptly graffitied as I speak. As a voter, I am impassioned about ensuring the future of Ireland is not bolstered by the past. Ireland has been dictated by the voice of two primary parties for its entire history as a free state. The blood of the entire history of our republic lies upon their hands, and thus voting this year seems more crucial than ever. There is, however, one problem. I am a final year student, in an intensive degree and the General Election has “fallen” on a Friday. I study in Belfast, but my voting constituency is in Waterford. To vote (due to my lack of owning any form of automobile) requires me to commute 8 hours, 2 trains, 1 Luas, 1 Bus all to get home. I cannot afford to miss university at such a crucial time -Ah ha ! A postal vote – that is what I must do.
Saturday 09 November 2024 – 09:00
As I sleepily log on to my computer, I am on a mission to get this sorted in time. It is a shotgun election so to speak, and so presumably the deadline for postal votes is soon approaching. As I navigate the website, I find the forms that must be completed. As I begin to answer the simple, straightforward questions I reach the second section – what fresh hell? The forms (made for students studying abroad), require a university stamp from your individual school for proof that you are in fact studying abroad… Its Saturday. I read about the Dáil dissolving at our previous timestamp and at that time, the administrative offices were gathering their belongings and making a beeline for the door, ready to enjoy their weekend away from students. No problem, I will simply have it filled out on Monday. As I return back to the website homepage, I stare in shock for a moment… The forms are due in for Sunday.
Sunday 10 November 2024 – 10:00
The deadline has now passed to submit the forms. In fact the form deadlines have not only passed for students like me, but also for people with disabilities or illnesses who are unable to physically attend the polling stations. I now must take not one day off of university, but two instead as I cannot commute in time to get to my polling station and commute back in one day. As I make my travel arrangements with my tickets costing an approximate £60, I can’t help but think of the many Irish students I have encountered in QUB. The number of students who will be working that Friday, the students who are struggling to pay the electricity bills and thus cannot afford the money for fuel or tickets home to vote. It should not be this difficult for students abroad to vote. I should not have to commute home to vote when postal votes were made for this exact reason. Even more importantly, I can only think of those who are suffering with illnesses and disabilities so intensely that attending polling stations is a non-possibility. My Grandad is an avid voter, and I know that it would kill him to miss casting his vote in an election. He is lucky to have a fantastic support system to bring him to and from his designated station, but if he didn’t, what is he to do? His vote, and many other peoples votes have thus been removed for reasons so far out of their control. For an individual to fit these requirements, they were expected to receive confirmation via forms from the GP that they were in fact to ill to attend. The GPs in every town of every county in this country close at 5pm sharp on Friday evening, and reopen on Monday at 8am. This provided ill voters approximately 7 minutes from the time of the announcement from the Irish Examiner to ring their GP schedule an appointment for the next 7 minutes, get to their GP office and have their forms filled out. That is a genuinely laughable concept. The Government has thus stripped a portion of the population of their vote – and this population is particularly impacted by the results of these elections. I have to wonder; how did this happen?
