InsidePolitics: The democratic legitimacy of the next general election will be thrown into doubt unless the political and administrative system finally responds to glaring inadequacies in the electoral system.
The appalling state of the electoral register is a fundamental problem and, while it is finally getting some political attention, the time for action is rapidly running out.
Even if the register can be sorted out before the election, which is expected in a year's time, another serious issue is looming.
The provisional census results due in three months will almost certainly show enormous disparities between constituencies in the ratio of population to TDs. These could be so large as to make a mockery of the existing boundaries.
Labour environment spokesman Eamon Gilmore brought the electoral register issue before the Dáil during the week. He quoted research carried out by political analyst Mr Odran Flynn for The Sunday Tribune which suggested that the register may be out by as many as 800,000 names. With over two million people entitled to vote, that is an enormous discrepancy which has the potential to result in massive organised electoral fraud.
"Such a level of inaccuracy, gives rise to two principal areas of concern: it deprives a significant number of people of the democratic right to vote, and provides potential for electoral fraud. The outcome of the next general election may be determined by the outcome in a handful of constituencies," said Mr Gilmore.
"It is unacceptable that the will of the people could be frustrated by those who are prepared to take advantage of the shambolic state of the register to perpetrate electoral fraud."
In response, the Minister for the Environment Dick Roche used the word "inexcusable" again and again as he outlined the failure of the local authorities to keep proper records, to keep the public informed, and even to cross-reference their own data.
The absurd situation in which local authority tenants are not even registered to vote by their own councils was just one example he cited of the incompetence that proliferates through the system.
The Minister pledged there would be a concerted effort to secured a significant improvement in the quality of the register but, given the failure to date of the local authorities, it is difficult to have any real confidence in their ability to sort out the matter.
Mr Roche referred to the potential use of census enumerators in an intensive registration campaign, but he would need to move quickly as a draft register is due to be published in November.
As well as the inaccurate register, there is the added problem that there is no adequate system of establishing a voter's identity on polling day.
Although voters can be challenged, there is no requirement to produce a photo ID. Given a deeply-flawed register, the absence of a strict ID requirement leaves the system wide open to fraud. Fiona O'Malley, proposed at last week's PD conference that PPS numbers be required as part of the registration process.
On top of this, the census will further undermine the credibility of the electoral system because the provisional results, due out in July, will show huge discrepancies between constituencies. If the Taoiseach is serious about waiting for another year to hold an election, and nobody doubts that he is, the case for a constituency revision is overwhelming.
If the census shows that any constituency has exceeded the constitutional requirement of a TD for between every 20,000 and 30,000 voters, a legal challenge is almost inevitable.
In the light of these serious issues, the future of electronic voting is almost irrelevant. It is not going to apply at the next election and it is now extremely unlikely that the machines purchased over two years ago will ever be used.
In any case, the one feature of the current electoral system in which everybody has confidence is the counting, so there is no need to change it.
On the subject of elections, the Minister for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, Éamon Ó Cuív, in a letter to this newspaper on April 26th, accused me of making two statements in the recent 1916 Rising supplement which were factually incorrect. He is wrong on both counts.
He claims the first factually incorrect statement I made was that "the Treaty was endorsed by the electorate in June, 1922." It is an incontrovertible fact that in the general election of June, 1922, the first after the Treaty was signed, 80 per cent of the seats were won by candidates who supported the Treaty.
How that could be interpreted as anything other than an endorsement of the Treaty by the electorate is mystifying.
In one of the standard works on the period, The Birth of the Irish Free State the historian, Joseph Curran, wrote: "Without question, the Treaty was the overriding issue in the election and its opponents were decisively repudiated." Joe Lee in his monumental Ireland 1912-1985 wrote: "The verdict of the people, whatever their mixture of motives and whatever constraints under which they voted, was clear. Eamon de Valera, never one to concede a case prematurely, privately admitted the anti-Treaty defeat."
The Minister's second claim of factual inaccuracy relates to my statement that in 1927 "Fianna Fáil entered the Dáil and, under protest, took the hated oath." The Minister claims this is inaccurate because "the Republicans entered the Dáil without taking an oath and simply signed a book in which the words were written."
The fact of the matter is that all any TD was required to do on entering the Dáil in 1927 was to sign the book in which the oath was written. The requirement on Fianna Fáil TDs was the same as that on every other elected member of Dáil Éireann.
If Fianna Fáil TDs never took the oath, then neither did anybody else in that assembly.
The Minister is quite entitled to differ with my interpretation of events from that era, but his claim of factual inaccuracies is mistaken.