It's all about saving on forms, pencils, rubber bands, twine, sealing wax, stamping instruments and much more. At least that's what the explanatory leaflet about electronic voting to be found on the Department of the Environment website declares. So anybody who suspects that it's about protecting candidates from coronaries in constituencies with protracted recounts where the results hang on six disputed votes is just being cynical, writes Breda O'Brien.
One of the few enjoyable aspects of voting is about to go the way of the dial telephone. Starting with a pilot scheme in Dublin North, Dublin West and Meath in this election, electronic voting will eventually become the norm everywhere. All those hours watching the tally men and women perform unholy feats of concentration will be no more. All that watching of commentators waffling for Ireland as the results straggle sluggishly in is to be a thing of the past. No more computer graphics threatening to crash any second to the visible discomfort of presenters. In short, all the craic will be gone out of it, as with Germanic efficiency we will have the results on the same day as we voted. What a horrible prospect.
Many of the politicians feel the same way, if the debates in the Dáil and Seanad are anything to go by. Some mused that because of the photographs, electronic voting was biased in favour of the photogenic rather than the battered. Concerns were voiced about the security of the system. Could somebody hack into it and subvert democracy? Although, as Senator David Norris pointed out, 45,000 votes for a Marxist-Leninist party in Westmeath might raise some suspicion.
No politician I am aware of is worried that it would no longer be possible to spoil a vote. The leaflet refers coyly to "unintentional spoiled votes" no longer being an option. What about the healthy Irish tradition of intentionally spoiled votes, which resulted in Dustin the turkey polling rather respectably in the presidential election in which Mary Robinson got elected? Spoiled votes were a message from the electorate who cared enough about democracy to get themselves to a polling booth but not very much for the voting options with which democracy presented them.
Joe Taylor, the actor and writer best known for his uncannily accurate representation of the many voices of the many tribunals, had found himself unable to vote for anybody on a number of occasions. Not going to the polling booth would represent apathy, and he is not an apathetic man. Reasonably enough, he points out that when he votes in a referendum he gets a chance to vote against a proposal. He wants an extension of that principle to elections. So he has started a "none of the above" campaign. This would mean an option on the electronic ballot which allows you to vote for none of the candidates and to register your dissatisfaction with the system in that way.
It might lack the colour of some of the more distinctive messages scribbled on the old ballot papers, but it would afford some satisfaction to those who feel disenchanted with what passes for democracy in this country.
If he gets his way, politicians might be faced with the alarming prospect of more votes for "none of the above" than for any of the people who are eventually elected. Voting for "none of the above" would be one of the more interesting ways to exercise a franchise. Decline in voter turnout has been a feature of recent elections and referendums. It has been interpreted in various ways, including as a manifestation of apathy, but voting for "none of the above" could not be characterised in this way. Instead, it would be a positive statement of disenchantment.
God knows, we have plenty to be disenchanted about. Coming up to an election, scepticism deepens by the day, as the same facts and figures are spun by the Government to show that we have never had it so good, and by the Opposition to show that we are going to hell in a wheelbarrow.
This might all seem unwarranted cynicism. I know many good and decent politicians who have a dog's existence and get little thanks for the work they do. Who in their sane senses would want to be a TD? Think of the backbenchers bouncing from pothole to pothole on their way to clinics, grimly aware that the neighbouring constituency is gradually disappearing under tarmacadam, and all because an independent TD or a minister rules there.
Speaking of ministers, Bobby Molloy deserved to go because of his intervention in the appalling Naughton case.
However, chances are that he made many other interventions which were necessary to nudge a recalcitrant civil service into giving people what they should have been given anyway.
Again, there are many fine people in the civil service, but the system rewards passive aggression which renders change almost impossible. The training encourages civil servants to specialise in non-decision. Words like "imaginative " and "groundbreaking" are enough to make civil servants very nervous indeed, because "fallout" and "heads rolling" cannot be far behind.
If our own bureaucracy were not enough to contend with, those who voted No to Nice because of the overweening ambitions of the eurocrats will not have been reassured this week. Carol Coulter reported last Monday that Ireland was not consulted on the final form of the European arrest warrant which was decided by the European Commission.
This warrant will replace existing extradition proceedings and remove the need for "dual criminality", that is, for the offence of which the person was accused to be a crime in both states. It will also replace the principle which some European states have of not extraditing their own citizens.
Given Ireland's turbulent history regarding extradition, it is extraordinary that we were not consulted and even more extraordinary that it must now become part of Irish law and be operational by the end of 2003.
Voting is an important right and nothing to be flippant about. Electronic efficiency removes the count, which is the most appealing aspect of our system, and that will do nothing to improve voter turnout. I suspect in time we may be screaming for the return of those forms, pencils, rubber bands, twine, sealing wax and stamping instruments.