Online registration for voters is to be introduced, the Department of Local Government has said. The online system will use a “single identifier” which is most likely to be an individual’s Personal Public Service (PPS) number. It is expected to take two to three years to implement and will replace 23 different forms with one form for registration. The array of forms currently include change of address, the supplementary registration and various postal voting forms. Minister of State John Paul Phelan said the voter registration problem was the biggest issue that continually arose in elections and referendums; that “people are registered in multiple places because they’ve moved houses and also the continuation of people being on registers years after they’ve passed away”.
Senior officials from the franchise section of the Department of Local Government will also meet the national returning officers for each constituency to review the operation of the abortion referendum.
Mr Phelan met franchise officials last week ahead of the review and said that “there’ll be a full discussion about what happened and what we need to do to fix any problems”.
Referring to the training of polling station staff, Mr Phelan said “it may well be that extra training is needed or just renewed because a lot of these people have done it for years and know it inside out”.
Full Article: Online voter registration system to deal with dead voters and multiple votes.