Good post from Donncha this morning on the importance of checking if you are still on the Electoral Register (this really only applies to my Irish readers).
Local County Councils have removed 300,000 voters from the register! So if no-one has called to your house in the last month or two, then you only have until Dec 9th to get yourself re-instated or else you can’t vote!
The ChecktheRegister site has been backed up with a TV advertising campaign, but I reckon that there’s a lot of people out there that think they won’t have been affected and will be in for a shock…
The site is very simple to use, you simply click on the name of the County Council for the area that you live in. For me this is South Dublin CC, it routes me to their page where you simply enter your first name, surname, house number and street name.
SDCC has updated their site since I last looked at it, they now tell you which elections you can vote in – I ran into this issue during the last elections, even though I have dual Irish-British citizenship, I wasn’t able to vote in Referendums or Irish Presidential elections as the details were wrong on the register. This has now been fixed – yay!
The other important piece of info on this SDCC page is if you have agreed to let your details be released for non-statutory uses – i.e. an edited version of the register that can be accessed by companies for direct marketing purposes (read: SPAM!). I’m not sure if all councils will provide this info, but it’s something else worth checking out. My council also provides a handy ‘Map’ link to allow me to see the location of my polling station, so that should same me some time come election day!
For your info, see my extract from the register (some details removed!), this explains the different types of voting rights assigned to different types of resident. The ‘N’ under edited register means that I have declined their kind offer of spam!
Howdie Ellie, I used the Dublin City Council section of the website and it couldn’t find my address.
You have to submit the address exactly how it appears on the register or it cannot find it. And you would be surprised at how many different ways a seemingly easy street address can be written.
So while I couldn’t find my street and there was no online help section or any directions on the site on what to do if you cannot find your street or indeed if you have any other problems with the site, you can phone your local authority and ask for the franchise department who informed that I was still on the register.
Posted on November 29, 2006 at 1:11 pm.
Hello Red Mum, good info there, I guess mine was easy to find as there’s only one word in the street name!
I guess I should have said, ‘Don’t Panic’ if you can’t pull up your details or find your name, you can always call your local council and they will know exactly how to help you.
Posted on November 29, 2006 at 1:15 pm.
Red Mum – that’s weird. On the Cork County and City registers I typed addresses and the form reloaded with a drop down of possible matches. That doesn’t happen on the Dublin one?
Glad you’re still on the register
Donncha.
Posted on November 30, 2006 at 11:35 pm.