Paul Hosford: Impossible to ignore the number of spoiled votes in presidential election 

In total, there were 213,738 spoiled votes in this election, which is a tenfold increase on the number of spoiled votes in the last presidential election

Spoiled votes in the presidential election at Mallow GAA complex. Picture: Larry Cummins

It is not the main storyline, but it will be impossible to ignore the sheer number of people who chose to spoil their votes in Friday's election.

Tens of thousands of people decided that, after a nominations process that produced three candidates, they did not feel represented by anyone who made it onto the ballot. 

Some 13% of people who voted saw the presidential ballot and decided to spoil their vote, some scrawling racist, misogynistic and homophobic screeds to underline their point.

In total, there were 213,738 spoiled votes in the election. This is a tenfold increase on the number of spoiled votes in the last presidential election, when there were 18,438 invalid ballots.

There are a number of factors that must be considered about how and why people decided en masse to spoil their votes, beginning with the size of the ballot.

In the 2018 and 2011 elections, seven and eight people made their way onto the ballot through the Oireachtas and council routes, which made the field more diverse and more dynamic. 

This time, all three candidates — Catherine Connolly, Jim Gavin, and Heather Humphreys — came through the Oireachtas route, while the councils did not nominate anyone. 

Indeed, just three councils — Kerry, Waterford, and Tipperary — opted to nominate anyone for the role. Barrister Maria Steen's late run at a nomination fell short of the 20 Oireachtas members required to get on the ballot.

Spoiled votes at the count centre in the Galway Lawn Tennis Club. Picture: Ray Ryan

The failure of Ms Steen, particularly, but also of Nick Delehanty and Gareth Sheridan to be nominated led to deeply-held blowback online and spawned a movement of, largely, right and far-right figures urging people to spoil their vote.

That movement held a launch event in Dublin last week where businessman Declan Ganley told people that they could spoil their vote as a form of protest at what he called "the rigging of the ballot".

"If Connolly or Humphreys, if they do not represent you or motivate you to want to vote for them....there's another option.

"There's an option to register a protest vote, to register your dissatisfaction with what we see as the rigging of the ballot that has taken place and that is to cast a spoiled vote," he said.

The truth is that what Mr Ganley said is, largely, correct. 

Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael had used their Oireachtas numbers to nominate their candidates and party councillors — under instruction in Fine Gael's case — opted not to nominate others. 

The term "rigging" is extremely crude and not fully accurate, but it is accurate to say that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael (and nearly every other party, for that matter) did not facilitate the nomination of political opponents. Nor would anyone really expect them to, surely?

But the net effect of that reality was a narrow ballot on which many people did not see themselves reflected in the choice for first citizen. That is a perfectly understandable grievance. Indeed, even Áontú leader Peadar Tóibín said he drew three Xs beside the candidates and wrote in the name of Maria Steen instead.

He said: “I felt really strange doing it, I felt in some way that it was nearly wrong doing it, but I had no choice in that ballot [on Friday] at all.

“I had no way to exercise a political choice and I wanted to protest that.”

Spoiled votes at Mallow GAA complex. Picture: Larry Cummins

But the low stakes of a second-order election and the relative size of those who spoiled their votes against the size of those who voted for Ms Connolly should not be written off for a number of reasons, chiefly the sheer vitriol of some of the messages which went along with the votes. 

From calling for the deportation of all Indian people, all African people and all migrants full stop, to messages encouraging violence against political leaders, to "hanging traitors", and messages about the abhorrent alleged sexual assault of a 10-year-old child in Citywest in Dublin last week, there is no question that there is a latent and virulent sense of anger and violence out there which cannot be cast aside.

In 2013, the far-right party Alternative for Deutschland picked up 1.8% of the vote in German federal elections, and it was seen as having been somewhat defeated. A year later, the party took seven of the 96 European Parliament seats in Germany. It is now the largest opposition party in Germany.

The people who spoiled their votes on Friday took part in a legitimate political action, as is their right. 

But the feeling of disconnection from the political system has downstream consequences and can be easily zeroed in on by bad-faith actors, as it has been already. Those who did so should not be written off, and those who wrote the worst of what was posted online should not be kowtowed to. 

But a deeper evaluation of why it happened is worth those in power undertaking.