Dead people still receiving polling cards to vote as report on register stalled

Thousands of deceased people may still receive polling cards for the General Election, as a report on the accuracy of the list of Irish voters won't be published until after it takes place.

An Coimisiún Toghcháin, an independent electoral commission, has begun an assessment of electoral registers in Ireland operated by local authorities.

Each local authority operates its own register of voters, with no single central register of voters.

As such, the commission has voiced concerns that there could be many cases where voters who may have moved from one constituency to another may not have been removed from their original local authority area, and may appear on multiple registers.

The commuission's Chief Executive Art O’Leary told the Oireachtas Committee on Local Government that the "state" of the electoral registers had been a "longstanding issue of some concern" for TDs and senators.

"We are finding that there are wide variances between the resourcing of local authorities’ franchise functions, and also the performance of those functions," he said.

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Another major issue is that thousands of deceased people may still be on the register, and receiving polling cards.

In July, following the local and European elections, it was found that 70 people were still listed on the electoral register for Skibbereen in county Cork despite being deceased, while one Cork county councillor claimed a woman "who had voted for 50 years" had been told she wasn't on the register.

While there is little evidence of voter fraud due to voters being registered in multiple electoral areas, electoral expert Odran Flynn said that the duplication is a "leading factor" in low turnout figures in Irish elections, one of the lowest figures in Europe.

Speaking to RTÉ's Prime Time last month, he said that "the register is in fact way overstated.

"There are still far too many people on it."