Calls for database to stop people being taken off the voting register

The chief executive of Cork County Council says a national database of electoral registers should be set up to ensure people are not denied a vote.

Tim Lucey made the comment after several councillors gave examples of how constituents found themselves taken off the register for no apparent reason.

A lengthy debate on the issue was sparked in County Hall yesterday after Sinn Féin councillor Melissa Mullane asked for a report on the local register and was told that around 11,000 people were removed from it in the past 12 months.

Officials said these would include people who had died or moved out of the area.

The council has 53 field workers who check the accuracy of the register. But the report stated that because of rapid population growth and increased mobility they “often have great difficulty in sourcing accurate details for the register, hence the reason why each individual should make an effort to check the accuracy of the register themselves.”

Many councillors maintained people who were deleted from the register weren’t written to, as officials maintained.

Deputy mayor of Co Cork, Independent councillor Tim Collins said during the last local elections he became aware of 15 people in his constituency who, for no apparent reason, were taken off the register.

“Who’s giving the go-ahead to take a person’s name off the live register. Is this political?” he asked.

Sinn Féin councillor Kieran McCarthy said his ex-wife was was removed from the register, but not any of the other voters who lived in the same house.

He said council staff had said they had received information that she had moved address, which she had not and the same explanation was given in the case of another man, which again was untrue.

Fine Gael councillor Noel O’Donovan said he inquired on behalf of a 70-year-old Rosscarbery man who was taken off the register and told he was dead.

Fine Gael councillor Kevin Murphy suggested that councillors and the public should be given access to a list of names of those deleted from the register.

“That’s a flaw. We have to get a better system in place. They must be accurate. To disenfranchise a person of a vote is not good,” he said.

Skibbereen-based Fianna Fáil councillor Joe Carroll said a lot of people living in West Cork were disenfranchised because they spent the week working and sleeping in Cork City and it was presumed that they had moved.

Mr Lucey said such incidents happened all over the country and he believed the only way of improving the system was to have a national register which was linked to a person’s PPS number.

He added that if a person changed address the onus was on them to contact their franchise office with that information.