Showing an Independent spirit when you go into polling booth

Date Published: {J}

Posters are going up. Then blowing down. Then going up again. A lot of them this time for Independent candidates, which I think is great.

We should elect them, throw out all the party members, and start over with a Dáil full of people who are actually allowed to think. Be careful though – there are some out there who appear to be Independent at first, but are just printing the words ‘Fianna Fáil’ very, very small. And then there’s Noel Grealish; being the one guy left when the party’s over is not what that word ‘independent’ usually brings to mind. There are plenty more independent Independents out there, and I intend to vote for them all.

Yes, really. A couple of years back, a Fianna Fáil woman was picking a fight with me in a wine bar late one night. "But who else is there?" was her refrain. Of course she wanted me to name some other party so she could argue that they were just as bad. I wasn’t having any. My answer was "Anyone. You. Me. Some stranger off the street. Citizens selected by lottery. Anyone would be better than Fianna Fáil."

I believed that passionately then, and even more now. Fianna Fáil’s central problem is that they have been in power too much. It leads not only to corruption, but to a different way of thinking. They come to inhabit a different culture – a ruling culture. We see it now in their inability to really grasp how betrayed the country feels. The Dáil needs a good flushing.

But who do you actually vote for? The alternatives are, frankly, not terribly inspiring. Knowing who you’re against but not who you’re for is a real problem this time out for a lot of people. But it needn’t be. We are blessed in this country with one of the best voting systems in the world. Yes it does have its disadvantages (though I certainly wouldn’t blame it for all our problems) but it also has a lot of power we hardly use. One thing that makes the system great is that you can effectively vote against a party. Even if you just leave out the Fianna Fáil candidates and put the rest in random order, you’ve made it that bit harder for FF to reach a quota.

It is far better to vote for something of course, and here there’s one basic rule that everyone should know: If you give your Number One to a candidate who is going to be elected anyway, you’re virtually throwing it away. Yes, if a candidate gets more votes than the quota the surplus is distributed, but in effect that’s just a fraction of a vote. If your first candidate is eliminated however, your whole vote passes on to your next choice – and so on. Line them up expertly, and it can boost the chances of a whole series of protest or independent candidates before winding up at a safe one.

So you should never not vote for a candidate because you don’t think they have a chance. You lose nothing by trying it, and you might be very pleasantly surprised.

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