Seth Barrett Tillman and Daniel Epstein-O’Dowd: Extending presidential voting rights to NI will have serious ramifications for the UK
With only weeks to go until the presidential election here in the Republic, the proposal to extend voting rights to Irish citizens residing in Northern Ireland (NI) has resurfaced.
In May, Sinn Féin’s motion to that effect was passed by the Stormont Assembly. Then, in June, a similar Sinn Féin motion was passed, unanimously, by the Dáil.
For context, in the Northern Ireland 2021 census, more than 630,000 people living in NI self identified as ‘Irish’.
Among these are a substantial number of adult Irish citizens who would have the right to vote if they were resident in the Republic.
Extending the right to vote to such individuals would be a considerable administrative task. Indeed, putting to one side the attractiveness of this measure to the substantial constituency of Irish nationalists, on both sides of the border, there remain significant questions that should be asked and answered before any such plan is put into effect.
First: How much will all this cost? And who will pay for it? Ireland? UK? Northern Ireland? Elections are an increasingly costly business. To extend voting to roughly half a million people in the Northern Ireland jurisdiction would considerably increase election administration costs.
Will the UK or the Stormont governments contribute to these costs?
And just maybe, the UK, Northern Ireland, and Irish public should be informed so that meaningful public debate could be held prior to implementation.
Second: How will voting in Northern Ireland actually take place? Will Ireland open consulate like offices across Northern Ireland to facilitate voting?
During the 2022 Brazilian presidential election, some 8,000 Brazilian expatriates voted from Ireland – with thousands queuing outside Croke Park.
However, establishing a scheme capable of facilitating hundreds of thousands voting will pose difficulties far beyond the Croke Park scheme.
Who will administer voting in Northern Ireland? Will it be Irish electoral officials, or will Northern Ireland’s electoral officials be co-opted?
If the latter, will the Republic’s Treasury pay these Northern Ireland officials for handling additional duties, or will Stormont pay them?
Perhaps the hope is that low-cost postal votes will be used. Who can tell? As yet, no details have been put forward to flesh out the scheme.
Finally: Who will be responsible for the enforcement of the radically amended Irish electoral law? If fraudulent ballots were cast by Northern Ireland residents, how would such wrongdoers be investigated, tried and, if convicted, punished?
It is hardly obvious that the UK authorities in Northern Ireland will volunteer to play any part in investigating and prosecuting instances of electoral fraud involving a foreign jurisdiction.
Will the Irish authorities seek extradition of alleged offenders from Northern Ireland? What (if any) safeguards will be in place to ensure the integrity of the new electoral process?
There is a continuing effort by those in favour of Irish national unity to carry on as if the border between the jurisdictions is a barrier only in name.
But for now, at least, the border exists. And the authorities -including the civil service, police service, and prosecutors – on each side of that border are responsible to different governments, who are in turn responsible to different electorates.
Ignoring the reality of the different jurisdictions and different authorities on this island advances no cause.
This is especially true when it is unclear how the project’s goal could be achieved, and at what cost, and where failure and fraud threatens both undermining public faith in what remains a working electoral system in the Republic and placing the UK government in the position of playing a significant role in administering Irish elections.
Is this all be done for little more than a symbolic gesture? Adding up all the potential gains and losses, one must ask: Is the game worth the candle?
There are serious questions to be asked and answered – all requiring open debate.
But let us not blind ourselves to the all too real downside.
If an Irish presidential election should be close, and if credible claims of fraud were raised in regard to Northern Ireland votes, UK participation in that election might very well aggravate such a conflict there – as well as here. Such things have been known to happen.
l Seth Barrett Tillman, Associate Professor, Maynooth University School of Law and Criminology (Dublin 6, Ireland)
l Daniel Epstein-O’Dowd, LLB, Government Relations Consultant, former Political Advisor within the Irish Parliament (Kildare, Ireland)