High percentage of spoiled votes

Tallies at the count centre in the RDS Simmonscourt are already showing a strong lead for Catherine Connolly over Heather Humphries as the votes in the presidential election are counted on Saturday morning.

The ‘Spoil the Vote’ campaign also seems to have been very successful, with many expressing their dissatisfaction with the choice of candidates quite explicitly on their ballots.

There were still three valid candidates for the electorate to vote for, despite Jim Gavin dropping out of the race on October 5.

There is no mechanism for removing names from a ballot paper after the nominations process closes, so in the event of Gavin winning he could have refused the presidency and triggered a fresh election.

That is appearing increasingly unlikely, as tallies are showing more spoiled votes than votes for the former Dublin manager.

Some constituencies are showing more spoiled votes than votes for Gavin and Humphries combined, including many in Dublin City.

Many spoiled votes had Maria Steen added as a candidate, and more still had slogans scribbled on them referring to the recent protests in Citywest, such as “she was only 10”.

Tallies of 55% of Dublin South Central’s ballot boxes showed Connolly in a strong lead with 78.8% of the total valid vote, Humphries lagging behind with just 15.6% and Gavin on 5.5%.

The number of spoiled votes outweigh Gavin and Humphries combined total of votes in that constituency by almost 700 ballots.

Tallies from Dublin South West (29% counted) and Dublin West (35% counted) are also showing strong leads for Connolly at over 60% in both constituencies, Humphries hovering just below 30% and Gavin picking up the last 10% of the valid vote.