News that the Electoral Office for Northern Ireland is to canvass all households this summer, for the first time since 2013 and a year later than planned, in order to update the electoral register – unlike the rest of the UK which has an annual canvass process – has the Sinn Féin MP for West Belfast, Paul Maskey, reaching for a page from the Donald Trump electioneering playbook. From the BBC report The canvass is legally required by the UK …
Official papers released under the 30/20 year rule document government analysis of the reasons for Joe Hendron’s West Belfast victory in the 1992 General Election, record a spot of SDLP infighting as election agent Tom Kelly airs his views on Seamus Mallon and John Hume ahead of a crucial court judgement on an election petition challenging the result. Voter fraud and personation was also under the spotlight, along with a decision to continue to exclude Sinn Fein from consultations about electoral spending.
If you’re not already on the Electoral Register, the deadline to register to vote in the UK Parliamentary General Election is Monday 20 April. The deadline for run-of-the-mill postal and proxy vote applications has already passed – 5pm on Thursday 16 April. However, it you will be unable to vote at your polling station on 7 May because of circumstances relating to your health and you could not have reasonably foreseen these circumstances before 5pm on 16 April you can …
Following on from Belfast Barman’s earlier post, some statistics about the 138 candidates nominated for Northern Ireland’s 18 Westminster constituencies. One constituency has all male candidates: Belfast West. Only one constituency has more women than men standing: Fermanagh and South Tyrone. No party has more than 40% female candidates. Overall 24.6% of candidates are female; 75.4% are male. Of the parties running more than 5 candidates, 2 unionist parties have ended up not running any female candidates: DUP (16 male …
The vacuum of incomplete European election results will be filled today by discussion of the speed of the count and desires to introduce electronic counting. The verification of the ballot papers had already been completed in the local government count centres, allowing European ballots placed in local government ballot boxes to be retrieved. [The local government and Euro elections will collide again in 2019, and the super councils can look forward to verifying both ballots again.] The sorting of first …
Catching up on a few emails, I realised that I’d neglected to post the second part of a post started in early September about the timeline for co-opting a replacement MLA (Conall McDevitt) and the sequencing of the process between the Speaker, EONI and the political party (SDLP in this case). While relatively mundane it does illustrate the various stages and worth putting into the public name to remind us of the process the next time an MLA needs to …
The NI Assembly has had numerous vacancies and co-options over the years, but few have generated as much interest at the resignation of South Belfast MLA Conall McDevitt and the SDLP’s process of replacing him. So how does the process work? Who’s involved? And what is the timeline? Article 6B of The Northern Ireland Assembly (Elections) (Amendment) Order 2009 holds the relevant process. Section 6B (1) was triggered last week when the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Graham Shields received written …
The Electoral Commission held their post-election seminar on Thursday morning in Belfast along with the Electoral Office (EONI) and Royal Mail. Representatives from local parties along with election staff and electoral observers were in attendance. 26 suspected absent ballot forgeries have been referred to the PSNI as a result of signature issues being “checked by a forensic expert at the NI Forensic Science Laboratory”. 78 postal ballots were found in a final sweep of NI Mail Centre on the evening …
At lunchtime, the Lord Chief Justice delivered his judgment on Rodney Connor’s petition and declared that Michelle Gildernew was duly elected as MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone constituency. He found that “there were some issues with how the counts were conducted” and three extra votes remain unaccounted for. However, the Newsletter report Sir Declan Morgan’s view that Even if those votes were introduced in breach of the rules and if they had all been counted in favour of the …
