Rigging the Irish Election? I Have A Better Idea.

20Oct07
Couldn't be worse than half the rubbish in the Dail
Picture by scamall
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Damien Mulley has a series of posts about how to rig the Irish election and it all sounds like a fierce hard amount of work to me. I have a much simpler idea about how you might influence the outcome of a general election in Ireland1.

1. Make sure your political party has a well organised grass-roots movement like, say, this one does.

2. Make excuses and some lame attempts to embarrass the public into accepting e-Voting machines, solving a problem that doesn’t exist2. You could try these ones. I think we already have some in stock.

3. Call the election for a weekday rather than a weekend for the convenience of voters.3

4. Use the aforementioned grass-roots movement, and perhaps some friendly mini-bus owners, to bus voters to the polling places early to form long lines out the door.

5. Encourage these early voters, especially the loyal elderly ones, to become “confused” and take their time in figuring out who to vote for. So many candidates…. What button do I press again? This will delay voters for other parties who may, in their frustration, just go home without voting.

6. Announce the results at 3am in a PowerPoint presentation and quietly mention the fact that although there’s no paper trail the result can be trusted because computers never lose votes. The turnout may be low (see previous point) but at least the majority voted for your party.

As a backup plan try to figure out some way of hacking the secure e-Voting machines. You could always use this document as a starting point.

Okay so it’s hardly a realistic scenario but like Damien I’m being satirical…

– Fintan

1 – Without having to resort to expensive vote buying tactics of course.
2 – Except how to make money for the company that produces the voting machines.
3 – Apart from students and people who are forced to commute great distances to work in Dublin from their homes in Portlaoise, Athlone, Mullingar….


Filed under: Humour, Politics   |  2 Comments