Colm O'Regan: There is something about voting that you can’t bate — every time I get a little teary

Comedian and Irish Examiner columnist Colm O'Regan pictured in Cork. Picture: Denis Minihane.

Dammit. Every time. 

Every time I vote I get a little teary. I should be cynical; there’s more money in it. But there is something about voting that you can’t bate. The simplicity of the little pencil and the plywood of the booth. No distraction. The last place where you can’t be on your phone.

There is nobody else between you and your choice. Even if you act the bollox and write Custard Creams Are Dacent on your ballot paper, it’s you. You’re owning it. It’s mindful.

The people who invigilate or whatever the word is for those who are tea-ed and sandwiched up to the eyeballs by the time the station closes. But they’re happy to see you. You have proved their point. That this is worthwhile. If it’s in a school it’s even more poignant. “Don’t let us down with your stupid selfish impulses,” say the little children’s paintings on the wall of the hall.

This time the two-foot ballot papers, especially the European one, contained some complete mentalists. But that’s part of democracy.

There have often been the eccentrics who you meet for the first time when you see their picture in the booth. One year there was a fella in our constituency who listed his occupation as inventor. I was very tempted to give him a number one. This was when the IMF was at the door. I figured we might need an inventor who could come up with a cunning plan or fashion an escape catapult from some spare electronic voting machines.

There was election paraphernalia around the place growing up. My father was in the cumann though I can’t say that he was very political. It was the 1980s Fianna Fáil way where nobody said “I am pro-Fianna Fáil”.

However they did say: “Do you want a lift to the polling station and shur while you’re there yerra ya know the way like…”

It’s a bit late to confess to political patronage but yes we did have loads of Fianna Fáil balloons to play with around the house for months after.

And also plenty of posters to paint on. Posters with bastions of the status quo on one side were painted with 2000AD characters on the other.

I found a leaflet on a trawl of a year where FF ran four candidates. Less a running mate, more a gang of your mates.

Elsewhere the vote is the high point. The count is perfunctory. Results in futuristic countries flash across holo-decks within minutes. Here in Ireland we have ‘The Count’. A festival of leaning, pencils, and spreadsheets and of course, tallypeople.

A mysterious race of wizards who see all your ballot papers and know your sins. They know you gave your first preference to someone who believes all property is theft and your second preference to an auctioneer. Why you went Green first and second to the fella who used to deliver th’oil. That your second preference was also a second cousin.

But isn’t it beautiful? The way your little vote travels between hands
bestowing multiple yesses along the way like a load of emojis floating around a Facebook live video. It’s paper but it’s powerful.

And this year for the first time in my life I bothered to find out how they work out how to distribute surpluses and how a 3rd and subsequent preference gets used. It’s never too late to stop living in ignorance.

So steeped were we in counting towards the end of last week, that when it was announced that Eric ten Hag had retained his seat in the Manchester United dugout I nearly thought it was due to the redistribution of Barry Andrews’ surplus.

And Eric, next time around, lookit I hope you’ll remember us at election time.