Foreign Votes, In Local Elections
A huge voting innovation occurred this year – did you notice?
In Ireland for the first time ever you can use your PPS number to register to vote.
Meaning your PPS number is a rapid path to getting onto the register of electors.
Changes to the registration system
You can now register for the first time and update the register throughout the year. If you provide your PPS number, you do not need to have your identification and forms witnessed at a Garda station.Applications to register and to change the register can be made online at checktheregister.ie.
Source: citizensinformation.ie
No longer do you need to have ID, or go to a Garda station.
Most people in Ireland are generally registered and the number who are not is probably relatively small, excluding voter apathy, maybe that is why it was not deemed newsworthy or framed in a certain way. (If you saw genuine coverage please post a link in the comments for readers)
Who needed this most?
Why foreigners of course!
Oh, and those welcoming them in with open arms and very many tweets.
Foreigners are a group entering Ireland both legally and illegally at unprecedented levels.
But hang on! I hear you say – Why would foreigners need to be registered to vote in Ireland that’s only for Irish people surley?
Yea, if you still don’t know, foreigners can vote in Irish Local elections and apparently since 2004 and so while not news, it was widely exposed last year to much dismay.
Foreign votes, in Local elections, if that’s not an oxymoron I don’t know what is!
Ordinarily Resident
Another facet that allows foreigners to vote is the application of the term “ordinarily resident” but it is the opinion here that this is being radically abused to subvert Irish elections.
It feels and looks like another “durable relationship”, where it seems no clear definition (despite showing that durable relationships in previous post here are fully catered for in immigration applications) – in electoral terms nothing could be found (at time of writing), so it is not hard to see or argue that someone who has only arrived here, with zero natural connections to Ireland are not in any way shape or form “ordinarily resident’ or even close to it, and this includes those whom have been evacuated from another country due to War (this would be extraordinarily resident).
If we applied the same test Irish Revenue do for the purpose of claiming Tax residency, it would reduce the immediate impact of large incursions of people onto the island in short spaces of time destabilising Irish elections.
If you have been tax resident in Ireland for three consecutive tax years, you become ordinarily resident from the beginning of the fourth tax year.
Source: revenue.ie
Ordinarily Resident needs to be defined in terms of the electoral register and it would be useful to create a status such as “extraordinarily resident” for balance.
Now if it was “Ordinarily Irish Resident” that might be a good start, and we might then say well why stop there why not “Ordinarily Native Resident” but maybe we should think bigger again and sort it all out once and for all (see Forward looking append to this post).
For now it is important to make note and be familiar with “ordinarily resident” where it may be used or cited to justify foreigners to vote in Irish elections, as the #ReplacementMigration maniacs do have form here with past referenda.
Why use PPSN’s Now?
The #ReplacementMigration regime has imported the largest number of people ever into Ireland in the shortest space of time, and with no sign of stopping – they also needed the quickest and simplest way to get the newly arrived on the register to vote.
Specifically for the local elections (not the Referendum), using the PPS number removes a substantial bottleneck, i.e. the need to go to a Garda station (and no one sees the impossibly huge queues at their local garda station) so it is all happens very discreetly
If you provide your PPS number, you do not need to have your identification and forms witnessed at a Garda station
No ID or visit to the police station required.
Voter ID – onboarding Voters at Scale
If you need to add massive numbers to the electoral register overnight the obvious thing to do is exactly what the #ReplacementMigration regime have just done, co-opt the PPS system into a quasi VoterID system.
The old method using Garda stations would collapse as already mentioned and bring too much attention to what is actually going on. Can you imagine hundreds of thousands of new registration passing through local Garda receptions. It would take years, there would be chaos.
So the #ReplacementMigration army have been given access via the most frictionless voting registration system ever. Far superior to anything an Irish person has ever had the privilege of interacting with to date.
There was much confusion and cynicism online in reaction toward what appeared to be a requirement to use a PPS to register to vote or update your details, but after clarification was given that it was, after all not necessary, this deflected from the real and true purpose of using the PPS number, to onboard new foreign voters in vast numbers over the shortest period of time, to be ready and waiting to vote in the local elections.
Let’s Talk Turkey
Since we do not know exactly how many potential foreign voters exist, we will draw a line at 2014, because this is the year HAP started and you need a PPS number to access social housing list to then qualify to apply for housing rent subsidy HAP (among the other social housing supports, or medical cards and now voting!) and the numbers of foreigners entering Ireland has really been increasing since then as outlined by earlier post on PPS numbers issued over time which you can read here.
Since 2014, over 1.2 million PPS numbers have been issued to non-Irish people from the rest of the World.
If we assume they are all more or less still here for the purpose of argument , then that represents a very big foreign voter reserve pool for the upcoming local elections, let’s have a look at the breakdown:
Once more for the sake of argument, let’s round this up to 1 million eligible adult foreign voters after taking out the children and older teens with best guess estimates, and we arrive at almost 1 million.
In reality it could be greater since we are drawing the line at 2014, but rather interestingly the 2022 Census shows that 1 in 5 people are foreign born or 1.017 million (at least 20% of Ireland population is foreign born) – have we kind of tracked or detected a reasonable population growth estimate from these two datasets?
Maybe, however it suggests the 1 million figure being a decent figure for the sake of argument.
Bottom line
Now that your PPS number acts as your de-facto VoterID, so it goes for newly arrived potential foreign voters, it is their VoterID, so it is your VoterID.
Dropping any cynicism or suspicion towards PPS as a way to register to vote allows you to utilise for Home advantage.
Share this post or start explaining to friends and family how foreigners are able to vote in local Irish elections (using only a PPS number), and how the local council control the housing system, whereby 40% of that housing list is foreign (for starters!), that this has been going on for decades, and then ask them do they think it is wise not to vote in the upcoming elections.
Get busy and start onboarding family and friends today using checktheregister.ie
It doesn’t matter if they if they’ve missed the Referendum deadline, no problem, the local elections is where the Irish Vote Vs Foreign Votes will occurs in a big totally unprecedented way, there is still time.
Countering 1 million foreign voters in the local elections should not bee seen as a easy task, or a cake walk, but it will be a far easier thing to achieve now, rather than in the future, a future where the numbers continue to increase (as is the case everyday) and the ratio of 1 in 5 foreign start to creep to 2.5 in 5 foreign.
Right now the Irish still have the numbers on their side, but on the ground per local elections area, key seats may easily be taken by foreign voting blocs due to concentration of various ethnicities.
It sometimes sounds corny, but people died so we could have peaceful elections, and it is not hard to imagine if they could see what has been done with their hard won victories, would they have ever bothered to turn up for the fight so foreigners could rock up to elections and vote us out of house and home?
IRELAND!
Turn up at ballot box or be replaced!
Forward Looking
A plan is in play to allow foreigners vote you out of house and home.
- Once the ratio of eligible foreign voters increases, you can expect political and media moves to push for a change in the law to allow foreigners vote in General elections and Referendums – It is the next logical step in any campaign to end Ireland.
- Further, no compelling or reasonable argument exists in the current context to deny the right to vote from oversees for the Irish people – especially any native Irish person who had to emigrate when their preference was to stay and live around kin and raise the next generation – If foreign voters are to be imported in place of the Irish whom have emigrated, with with no sure path to return, then foreign voters will out number the Irish and have the ability to vote all Irish out of house and home (country), representing a total subversion of the Irish state against the Irish people and, it can all happen very quickly as outlined above – then the Irish who live oversees will, at some point, have no homeland to return to at all – therefore, all native Irish people have a birth-right stake in their homeland as long as they are alive no matter where they reside, which includes an inalienable right to vote, they are born Irish voters, which is a degree infinitely far above any claim a foreign vote on Irish soil is in any way equal or should even accrue the privilege without native merit.