BY JEROME HUGHES
A CANDIDATE in the forthcoming local elections has branded the electoral register a ‘disaster’ after he received multiple polling cards at two different addresses prior to the recent referendums.
Aontú’s Liam Mulligan moved back to his hometown of Letterkenny six years ago having spent years living in Dublin.
He says two polling cards, for himself and his wife, arrived at his old address in Dublin while two cards also arrived at his current address in Letterkenny.
In addition, two polling cards arrived at his current address for individuals who haven’t lived there for seven years.
“The electoral register is a disaster and no effort is being made to fix it. The question here is about the quality of the register. How is this system operating? It’s certainly not operating properly,” he claims.
Mr Mulligan previously ran unsuccessfully in the Glenties Local Electoral Area (LEA) during the last elections in 2019.
He’s again running for Aontú on June 7 but this time he’s a candidate in Buncrana LEA.
“I was out canvassing in the last elections and, in a housing estate in Creeslough, I met a couple who were registered under three different addresses in the same estate,” he said.
There are serious questions to ask and answer over how we elect our public representatives and how we conduct referendums, according to Mr Mulligan.
“In the last general election, the quota in Donegal was twice the quota of Dublin Central. The Constitution from 1937 says seats are distributed by population.
“Obviously, we’re not getting proportional representation if it takes twice as many votes to elect someone in Donegal as it does in Dublin.
“Both Pat ‘the Cope’ Gallagher and John O’Donnell got more first preferences, and more final votes, than Paschal Donohoe. He’s a minister for finance and they’re not even in the Dáil. That’s not proportional representation,” concluded Mr Mulligan.
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