Election? The Seanad election March 30, 2020
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Uncategorized.trackback
Polling closes in the Seanad election this morning. Counting will begin this afternoon, to fill 43 of the 60 senators’ seats from vocational panels.
A further six seats will be filled from the university panels, counting for those will start tomorrow.
The count will take place at Dublin Castle, where Oireachtas staff say appropriate measures will be put in place to protect staff and candidates from the spread of Covid-19.
How does that last work? What sort of measures are used?
And there’s the small matter of the following:
The final 11 senators to make up the 26th Seanad will be announced by the incoming taoiseach of the next government.
The Cedar Lounge Revolution 
It’s an appalling system. I’ve voted in the last two elections with the sole purpose of keeping Rona Mullen out, but it feels wrong even exercising such an unearned right.
The citizens assembly has worked quite well though…..:)
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And of course no legislation can pass without those senators being appointed by a new Taoiseach )not Varadkar).
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“And of course no legislation can pass without those senators being appointed by a new Taoiseach”
That’s not certain. Profesoor Oran Doyle and Dr Tom Hickey of TCD and DCU law schools argued last week in the Irish Times that a new Seanad could validly legislate in the absence of 11 Taoiseach’s nominees: https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/oireachtas-can-pass-laws-in-public-interest-without-taoiseach-seanad-nominees-1.4213010
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That’s an awful lot of tenuous reasoning. If these were undergraduates, would it be accepted…?
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And it trundles on:
We also suggested that, were a court were to decide that legislation enacted without the taoiseach’s 11 senators was unconstitutional, the court would probably suspend the declaration of unconstitutionality for 12 months. To do otherwise would invite chaos.
https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/letters/seanad-%C3%A9ireann-and-a-constitutional-impasse-1.4217120
Just silliness by this stage. Apparently the Constitution is only as good as its convenience to the Dublin establishment.
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I’ve pretty much always voted in the NUI panel. I think I might have spoiled my first vote back in the early eighties with some juvenile slogan or other.
I even addressed envelopes for Sean Garland, the WP candidate on some panel or other, some time in the later eighties.
This time Ruth Coppinger got my number one. No question. Doubt she’ll make it though.
It is of course a rotten system right through – the make-up of the Seanad and how people are elected and appointed to it.
But if you have a vote in it, no harm in using it. Every little helps – if you can contribute to keeping out the likes of Mullen and putting in the likes of Coppinger, you should.
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Mullen pretty much a cert though. As far as I can see he’s the only out and out conservative running in a field of 19.
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Yes. And he’s also a serious campaigner – sends updates of his activity at least once a year, letters as well, and I’d say has a serious bunch of people working with him on his campaign to get his vote out. I wouldn’t vote for him in a month of Sundays but his opponents have to be serious too. Most of the no-hoper NUI Seanad candidates seem to be people with too much time on their hands and nice liberal opinions on most stuff. They throw together a leaflet before the election and lob it out there. No-hopers.
A few like Coppinger and the ex PbP chap who talks about housing (Rory Hearne, I remember!) and Laura Harmon, I think, from the National Women’s Council, have put campaigns of sorts together. Well, at least their leaflets are more serious than the no-hopers.
But we’re looking at McDowell, Mullen and Higgins getting re-elected in all probability.
Think I’ll go back to the juvenile sloganeering and spoil my vote again the next time (if God spares me and the NUI and the Seanad). Smash the Seanad! Smash the NUI! Re-education camp in the Bog of Allen for all NUI graduates (bar me and a few of my mates)!
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Hopefully an increased anti-Mullen vote and strong left transfers will cause a surprise. I agree Mullen is a cert and it will probably be the three incumbents again though, incumbency or being well-known is a big advantage with these elections.
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Don’t understand the system but Warfield seems to be on course to return,having topped the poll.Dunno if he will get transfers though.
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Warfield seems safe enough, McHugh probably won’t make it though.
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Looking better for McHugh now.
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Talking to a chap yesterday who is an FFG senior party apparatchik. He came out with this quote, which you’ve probably heard before:
In an ordinary election, when you’re canvassing, you’re dealing with liars. A Seanad election is worse though because in a Seanad election, when you’re canvassing, you’re dealing with professional liars.
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Brilliant, what was it the FF guy said yesterday, take the number of votes promised in a Seanad election and halve them.
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Warfield elected.Unfortunately McHugh didn’t make it.
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RTÉ reported at lunch time that it was Labour transfers that pushed FF and FG candidates ahead of McHugh. In this case “Labour transfers” are probably that: transfers by Labour party politicians.
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My senior FFG apparatchik told me that FFG (take your pick) had a deal with Labour re transfers on at least one of the panels.
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Must be at least two, then, because Labour got nothing on the Cultural and Educational Panel. Would it be fair to say that Labour’s strategy is to try squeeze out the Green Party?
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Labour Cllr Annie Hoey from Meath elected on the Agricultural Panel. Presumably with the help of that deal.
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Mullen tops NUI poll 😦
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Yeah, he’s got a constituency alright.
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The No votes in the marriage, repeal, and blasphemy referendums were over 30, which would give a seat in any constituency in the country.
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There is something fairly sickening though that between Mullen and McDowell they’ve got 48.66%. Higgins a bit too far ahead of Coppinger to be caught?
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Yeah, Higgins has taken more transfers than RC after each elimination, just over 1900 ahead, Healy eliminated now, then Harmon, I’d expect she’ll break heavily for Higgins.
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True.
But he does the work too; he takes the job seriously and he takes the campaign seriously.
I reject pretty much everything he stands for. But those who stand against him have to show the seriousness and hard work he shows in order to unseat him.
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That’s a good point @Joe. I also think the fact that there was a lot of talk post Repeal by some on the left about getting Mullen out perhaps galvanised his supporters and others to go and vote for him. I’m not sure Mullen was going to be beaten no matter what but if he was it needed a better and more organised campaign by the left probably focused around a couple of candidates rather than the plethora of leftish candidates who did stand.
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So Mullen and McDowell are definitely back in. Last seat would appear to be between Higgins and Coppinger. You’d expect Higgins to be more transfer-friendly but is there a hope that the left turn, such as it was, in the general election will be repeated in the NUI Seanad vote, giving Coppinger an outside chance? There’s plenty of votes in play. Dream on, Joe.
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Looks like about 40,000 voted, out of a register of 112,000 which itself must be a relatively small percentage of NUI grads in total.
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The older young lad had a vote in the Trinners election. The vote came to our house and he wasn’t bothered. The younger young lad is in his final year in DCU. He asked his older bro could he use his vote. Fire ahead says big bro. So one Trinners ballot paper was spoiled with the slogan Votes For DCUheads Now! scrawled across it.
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Ian Marshall (former Ulster Farmers’ Union president) out, which is a shame.
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Surely in the Taoiseachs eleven anyway?
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A good pick in my view. Better than a lot of other Taoiseach’s picks.
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Many university graduates kick the ladder away as they reach a certain “status”.
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Many were born near the top of the ladder anyway, while imagining they got there through ‘hard work’.
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Industrial and Commercial panel is a nail-biter, looks like the Soc Dems could take the final seat, but very much 50/50:
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“Independent Frances Black kept her seat and councillor Mark Wall gained the fourth Labour party Seanad seat…..
Meanwhile the Fine Gael parliamentary party has been told by leader Leo Varadkar that he will act on the gender problem triggered by the Seanad elections.
All of the ten Senators elected for the party so far are male.
RTÉ News understand that in any coalition deal involving Fine Gael, Mr Varadkar will seek to ensure that most, if not all, leader nominations to the Seanad are female.
Fianna Fáil is also presented with a similar problem – of 13 Senators elected so far, 11 are male.”
https://www.rte.ie/news/politics/2020/0402/1127943-seanad-election/
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“Frances Black has told how she came from a tenement house, never sat her Leaving Cert and now as a senator in Leinster House is an advocate for people who have no voice….
The singer, who is a social justice campaigner, left school at 16…
“We come from a place called Charlemont Street in inner city Dublin, it’s all very fancy now with office blocks….
“My Seanad work is so important to me, I will continue to be the voice for those who feel they haven’t got a voice in the Seanad, I work closely on homelessness, mental health and Palestine.
“I’m on the Good Friday implementation committee and that’s very important to me, that Brexit won’t be disastrous for our good people in the North.
We lived very near Leinster House, only about a 20-minute walk.
“We’d play on St Stephen’s Green, you might walk past Leinster House and think, ‘Oh my God, look at this huge house where all of those posh politicians work.”
https://www.irishmirror.ie/showbiz/irish-showbiz/frances-black-tells-how-came-21215899
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