Up to 1987 about 73 per cent of registered voters normally participated in general elections. During the following 15 years this voter turnout dropped by 10 percentage points, to just under 63 per cent in 2002. In local elections the turnout has traditionally been an additional further 10 percentage points lower than in general elections, and in 1999 the local election turnout actually dropped to 50 per cent, writes Garret FitzGerald
However, in last year's local election the turnout was a good deal higher, at 57 per cent. This was because the local election was accompanied by a European election, and also by a referendum that proposed to restrict the acquisition of citizenship through birth here or in Northern Ireland to babies whose mothers had been living in Ireland for at least two years.
It is worth recalling that the last time a local and a European election had occurred simultaneously was in 1979. At the 1974 Paris summit Liam Cosgrave and myself successfully intervened to bring the timing of the first proposed direct European election back from the proposed date of 1980, because this would enable us to ensure a better turnout by having the European election coincide with the next Irish local election, due in 1979. This ploy worked, and the turnout in that 1979 double election was 66 per cent.
Unfortunately, the link we had thus contrived between these two types of election was broken when my own government decided in 1984 - against my strong advice - to postpone the local election that year, in the vain hope of a better result a year later. However, because several subsequent governments shared a similar delusion, further postponements of local elections in 1999 brought them back into sync with the quinquennial European elections and further local election postponements of this kind have since been banned by a constitutional amendment.
Why has turnout in general election contests dropped to under 63 per cent?
First of all because our electoral registers have has always been compiled in a fairly haphazard way and frequently include the names of many who are dead, or who have moved away from the address listed, which has the effect of artificially reducing the turn-out percentage.
In many other countries people have to take active steps to register with the local authorities if they wish to vote in any election. While in the US this requirement seems to have contributed to a low poll, many European voters are very assiduous about registering in this way, with the result that quite high turnouts are achieved in some EU states.
The university graduate registers used for Seanad elections of university senators have also contained a huge number of names of absent or deceased graduates. When I stood for election to the governing body of UCD in 1964, one of my helpers found that Seán Mac Diarmada's name was still on the graduate register - 48 years after his execution by the British in 1916. The graduates' register has, however, recently been radically revised.
These defects in our national electoral registers certainly explain part of our apparent low electoral turnout. But there are also many people who do not use their vote. Several years ago the Central Statistics Office published the results of a survey of voters that it had carried out after the 2002 general election, as part of the Quarterly National Household Survey.
Just over 75 per cent of those surveyed claimed to have voted on that occasion - a significantly higher proportion than the 63 per cent of those on the register who had in fact voted.
No doubt part of the difference between these two figures was accounted for by the defects in the register just referred to. But it is well established that some of those who fail to vote are reluctant subsequently to admit to their failure. It is possible to check the validity of one at least of the reasons for not voting given by respondents to the CSO survey, namely absence from home. The CSO's Household Travel Survey shows that on an average day during the quarter from April- to June 2002 (the period within which the last general election was held), the absent from home figure was 4 per cent - which corresponds very closely with the 3.8 per cent of the sample who, in this survey of voting, gave such absence as their reason for not having voted in the May 2002 general election.
Other reasons given included illness or disability (1.5 per cent); "no interest" (5 per cent); disillusionment (2.5 per cent); and "too busy" (2 per cent). But by far the most important reason given is: "Not on the register" (almost 5.5 per cent). The size of this response suggests that a review of our registration system is long overdue, and action is being taken on this matter.
One reason contributing to almost one voter in 10 now saying they are uninterested or disillusioned or too busy to vote is that during the past 15 years, because of unpredictable coalition patterns, some voters no longer know what kind of government their vote will yield. And in general elections voters are mainly interested in what kind of government their votes will produce.
Whereas only 41 per cent of 18 and 19-year-olds claimed to have voted in the 2002 general election, and only 53 per cents of those aged 20-24, the claimed voting rate rises sharply with age thereafter - to a peak of 90 per cent for those aged 65-74. The unemployed are also more inclined to abstain, as well as those who are married but separated. The best voters are married people.