Local history with Monica McGill: Why exercising your voting rights is so important in this day and age

SO, IT’S finally formally announced – we will have a general election on November 29, 2024 to elect our representatives to the 34th Dáil.

Apologies if this article appears “preachy”, but some people may be voting for the first time; others may not be aware of sources of information about the voting process.

The websites of both South Dublin County Council and also the Citizens’ Information Service provide reliable information about voting in elections– see https://issuu.com/ southdublincountycouncil/docs/90570 _sdcc_your_vote_your_voice_a4_boo klet_v1 and also https://www. citizensinformation.ie/en/government in-ireland/elections-and-referenda/voti ng/voting-procedure-in-a-general election/#35fb3c .

Voting in elections is one of the primary duties of citizens. For our democracy to work properly, it’s important that people who have the right to vote do so. Why?

Because voters’ preferences can only be considered if they vote (i.e. cast their ballot).

Obviously, non voters’ preferences can’t be taken into account.

When you go to vote, bring proof of your identity with you to the polling station on time on the day in case an official there asks you for it. Proofs of identity include passport or driving licence. (For the full list of accepted IDs, see the Identification When Voting section at the Citizens’ Information Service website above.)

The polling card which will be delivered to your address is not proof of your identity.

The polling card merely tells the addressee where to vote (officially known as the polling station) and when. Even those who have voted for many years are advised to check their polling cards to make sure their usual polling station is at the same location as before.

Occasionally, the location can change. If by some mischance your polling card doesn’t arrive, then see SDCC’s For Voters section at https:// www.sdcc.ie/en/services/our council/elections-and-voting/for-voter s/ and select the Find Your Polling Station tab at the bottom of the webpage where you can consult the map entitled Polling Station Locations 2024 SDCC.

Otherwise, in plenty of time make an enquiry to South Dublin County Council’s Customer Care section by email to info@sdublincoco.ie or by phone to 01-4149000.

Brief History of voting rights (enfranchisement) in the Republic of Ireland

We weren’t always the democracy we know today.

“One man, one vote” wasn’t always available to the majority of people here.

Many of our forebears were not entitled to vote at all, in any election. They had no input regarding what laws were passed or what decisions would be made which affected the country or its general population.

It took a long time and much effort to change that situation. We owe it to those who worked hard to obtain our right to vote, to do so.

No voting rights for ordinary people

Down through the centuries, most of the people in Ireland and Britain didn’t have voting rights, nor could take part in choosing who would represent them in government.

Property ownership and religious beliefs combined in the time of the Penal Laws and onward to discriminate against both men and women.

Gradually, and with great difficulty, a series of laws were passed in the Westminster Parliament. Together they resulted in lifting the discriminations, but at that time only adult men could vote.

Women remained disenfranchised, no matter what their age or status. Caitriona Crowe’s article – See https://www.irishtimes.com/ culture/heritage/how-irish-women won-the-right-to-vote-in-1918-1.3697 389 – traces the difficulties that many had to face to obtain voting rights.

For instance, a woman in the Ireland of the 1870s had a deeply restricted existence – not the kind of life we may take for granted nowadays. As well as being disenfranchised back then solely on the basis of their sex, women were also forbidden membership of public boards or local authorities, they were discouraged strongly (i.e. socially prevented) from earning their own living, their education was “unnecessary and undesirable”.

Any property they owned before they married became their husbands’ the moment they said “I do”, and their legal custody of their children ended when each child reached the age of seven.

Ordinary men’s live were also curtailed, but less so than women’s.

1918 – Men (and some women) can vote

Crowe says the 1918 Representation of the People Act was important in getting voting rights for men and (with restrictions) women.

The British Government recognised the difficulty of denying voting rights to servicemen who had fought in World War One. It recognised that many women had also served during the Great War.

The 1918 Act gave voting rights to all men in Britain and Ireland aged 21 or over.

Men who had seen active service could vote from age 19. Women could vote, but only if they were aged 30 or over and if they owned property above a certain value and other restrictions.

The General Election in December 1918 was held only a month after the official end of World War One.

Irish Government – full voting rights

Our newly-born State granted equal voting rights to women in 1922, six years before British women gained the same status.

Then, in 1972 Ireland reduced the minimum voting age from 21 to 18. So, what has the Dáil ever done for us?

Here are just three examples:

First example –

Gone since July 31, 1973 is the infamous “marriage bar” (also colloquially known as “the marriage ban”). It had operated since 1924 and cut short many a good career.

The bar meant that any unmarried woman who worked in the Irish civil service had to resign upon marriage and could not be re-employed in any similar career.

The bar extended to other permanent, pensionable jobs as well.

Second example –

Another change here is the Family Home Protection Act, first brought to law in 1976.

Broadly, the Act prevented a spouse (usually back then, the woman’s husband) from “selling the house from under her feet”, as the saying was in those days when such things did happen.

Third example –

Who remembers the Marriage Equality Referendum in 2015? More than 60 per cent of eligible electors voted, an exceptionally high turn-out.

Many eligible Irish people working away from their home base that May returned in time specifically to vote in the Referendum and took the next available flight, rail, boat or road-trip back to their workplaces.

Whether or not you liked the outcome, there was no doubt what the majority of the voters clearly wanted, and obtained.

There are various important national issues requiring legislation.

Draft legislation is debated in the Dáil and voted into law by the people who will become our TDs in the next Dáil, but only because a sufficient number of ordinary people voted for each of them. Everyone’s vote is important.