Seanad candidate expected full recount after she lost by one ninth of a vote, High Court hears
Angela Feeney, county councillor and member of the Labour Party’s central council told the High Court she wants a full recount of the recent Seanad agricultural panel election.
A former Seanad election candidate wants a full recount of the recent agricultural panel vote in the interest of fairness and transparency, the High Court has heard.
Angela Feeney, a member of the Labour Party’s central council and former head of Technological University Dublin’s school of languages, law and social sciences, has brought a High Court petition challenging the conduct of vote counting for the agricultural panel.
Ms Feeney, a county councillor in Kildare, wants January’s election result overturned and a recount ordered.
Ms Feeney was eliminated on the 23rd count by a margin of .116, or one-ninth, of a ballot, missing out on the final seat to Fine Gael’s Maria Byrne.
Each valid Seanad ballot paper is deemed to have a value of 1,000 votes. The total valid poll for the agricultural panel was 95,667 votes. There are 11 seats on the panel.
Ms Feeney’s case claims there should have been a full recount of the ballots, rather than simply a repeat of the 23rd count. She says her request for a full recount was denied by the returning officer.
On Tuesday, giving evidence at the hearing into her action, Ms Feeney said she was asking the court to grant the recount in the interest of fairness and transparency. She added that the “bigger issue” in the case was that the public should have faith and transparency in their electoral system.
Addressing her concerns around transparency at the count centre, Ms Feeney said she was “surprised” when counting began at such a distance that candidates and their teams had no proper line of sight of the process.
Counting continued at a distance of about seven feet away, and didn’t lend itself to “proper oversight” of the process, as one might expect at local or Dáil election count centres, Ms Feeney said.
Ms Feeney said there was an expectation her request to the returning officer for a full recount would be granted, given the slim margin between her and the next candidate following the 23rd count.
Cross-examined by Catherine Donnelly SC, for the returning officer, Ms Feeney agreed other candidates vying for a seat on the agricultural panel were eliminated by similarly slim margins, less than the value of one ballot paper.
Ms Feeney said because she was last to be eliminated, she had the potential to be last to be elected. None of the other candidates missed out by virtue of a margin as fine as hers, she said.
Ms Feeney agreed that her side hadn’t identified any particular error in the count process. She said she believed the error was not allowing the full recount, and the lack of transparency at the count.
Ms Donnelly put to Ms Feeney that the count was visible to candidates. The councillor said the visibility was not adequate, not to the level that would instil confidence.
Asked why she did not raise with the returning officer concerns around transparency when she first arrived at the count centre, Ms Feeney said it did not seem she and her team had an opportunity to raise such concerns.
Conor Power SC, appearing for Ms Feeney, said the returning officer had discretion in granting a full recount, but said a number of factors must be considered by any reasonable returning officer in exercising that discretion.
In Ms Feeney’s case, those factors included the narrow margin of difference between her and the next candidate, the very small margin of difference on a number of previous counts and the possibility of human error during the count, Mr Power said.
The case, before Mr Justice Mícheál O’Higgins, continues.
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