CONSPIRACY THEORIES THAT the general election was rigged are being spread in far-right circles, including by party leaders and candidates who failed to gain seats in the 34th Dáil.

Claims that the election was corrupt began to be aired as election results began to roll in – showing not just that far-right candidates aren’t going to win a Dáil seat but that many would fail to get their deposits or expenses back. 

“Does anyone think this is possible?” wrote Philip Dwyer, a far-right candidate, in response to an RTÉ report that he received just one vote from a box in Newtownmountkennedy, a town in Wicklow where anti-immigration protests took place earlier this year.

“Definitely no election interference going on here…. are RTÉ actually straight out telling us the game is rigged?” he wrote.

On the other side of that claim, some social media users are posting his words to indicate he only received one vote in the entire election. The tally that was originally referenced was from a tally of one of many boxes being opened. He, in fact, got 435 first preference votes in Wicklow (out of a 57,071 turnout). 

Other theories were about possible election interference were more specific.

“I’ve no doubt that Gerard Hutch was put into this race, not to necessarily take a seat — because the establishment don’t really want that — but he was put into the race to stop me and to stop the emerging nationalist movement,” said Malachy Steenson, a Dublin City Councillor who came to prominence during protests against asylum seeker accommodation in East Wall in November 2022.

Both Steenson and Hutch, a notorious gangland figure that entered the election race while on bail, ran in the Dublin Central constituency where they both tried to court inner-city voters.

When Steenson was eliminated and his votes distributed to the voters’ next preferences, most were transferred to Hutch.

“It shows how far this state will go to stop the emerging nationalist movement”, Steenson said, claiming he had been on course to take a Dáil seat “if only for the state”.

Other posts spread on Telegram claim that the Gardaí brought the Monk over from Spain, or that charges were dropped against him if he agreed to split the nationalist vote.

The figures do not back up the claim Hutch cost Steenson the election.

On the count that Steenson was eliminated, his votes combined with Hutch’s were still more than 600 votes short of the quota.

To win, Steenson would have had to have significant transfers from parties that Steenson had set himself in opposition to.

However, the narrative that Hutch had ruined Steenson’s run has been taken up by far-right parties, including the National Party, who retweeted an analysis by Keith Woods (who once described himself as an anti-semite in a now-deleted tweet) saying Steenson “would almost certainly have won a seat if not for the late inclusion of celebrity candidate Gerry ‘the monk’ Hutch.”

Every major far-right party has suggested that Ireland’s election was illegitimate.

Improvements needed

However, aside from the conspiracy theories, some genuine concerns have emerged throughout the count. As is fairly routine in PR-STV, recounts of ballots were ordered in some areas, and a full recount is underway in one constituency.

In addition, and as is again quite common in Ireland, many people have reported receiving two polling cards. The Electoral Commission was established last year, in part, to help compile (and tidy up) the various electoral registers held by local councils.

However other, unofficial groups have also gone looking for any hint that the election was illegitimate. One group, which claims that asylum seekers are part of a “plantation”, put out a post beginning: “If anybody, in any constituency, feels as though there has been voting malpractice…” before giving their contact details.

That post was shared by Glen Moore, a councillor with the Irish Freedom Party who failed to win a seat in the General Election.

Other claims of election interference contend that certain candidates or parties had been “silenced”.

“[The] ‘Vote for Ireland’ X account has been taken down suddenly and their website listing of nationalist candidates for today’s General Election taken down too!” wrote Ben Gilroy, the leader of Liberty Republic, a party that failed to win any seats despite Gilroy himself running in three constituencies.

“This stinks of political interference,” he continued, before tagging the head of X.com, Elon Musk.

The account that Gilroy was referring to had been the subject of an investigation by Dublin Inquirer journalist ‪Shamim Malekmian‬, who was trying to discern who ran the account, which spread misinformation in its attempts to organise a political campaign.

The Irish People political party also cast doubt on the integrity of the election, sharing a video of one of their candidates holding placards reading “no democracy in Louth” in which she claims “a free and fair election is not happening in County Louth” because she was not invited to speak on radio station LMFM (which she calls “LFM” throughout the video).

“Hearing stories of voting stations not asking for ID and ballot sheets being removed without voters present,” failed candidate Derek Blighe wrote on X on 30 November.

“We could be seeing a future of voting process being monitored from start to finish like we’ve seen in the US.”

It was perhaps a strange comparison for Blighe to make given he leads Ireland First – a party whose name copies the America First slogan of Donald Trump, a figure who Blighe has praised. Trump has made numerous allegations of voting fraud in America and claimed that the 2020 election was illegitimate.

On the day of the election, Blighe had claimed that a bank had closed his wife’s account because they saw him as “a threat to the status quo”.

“It shows you the lengths that they will go to to try to silence their critics,” he said in a video posted online.

One of the most popular claims that the vote was illegitimate came in the form of a video by a well-known spreader of misinformation. 

The video was viewed more than 60,000 times on X and Telegram, and shared hundreds of times, including by Derek Blighe; Ben Gilroy; Hermann Kelly, the leader of the Irish Freedom Party; and Garrett McCafferty, who unsuccessfully ran for the National Party in Dublin Rathdown.

The video, which was posted and reposted with the caption “Rigged democracy??” claims that the election was fixed because mainstream media doesn’t include “anything off-script or against the establishment narrative”.

“If you lived in a true democracy, that wouldn’t be the case,” the man in the video says.

“Your local tidy towns group is controlled by the footsoldiers of all the establishment and fake-opposition parties. So let’s stop pretending that we live in a democracy,” he goes on, saying the election was “rigged from the get-go”.

Similar claims of vote rigging also appeared after the local and European elections in June, in some cases shared by the same people.

Foreign interference

A report by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), a counter-extremism think-tank, found that the vast majority of these (86%) related to claims of “foreign interference”, including suggestions that foreign-born candidates were threatening Irish sovereignty or that parties were harvesting votes by registering asylum seekers to vote (which, for local elections, is legal).

Meanwhile, more than one-in-eight false claims (13%) analysed by the ISD referenced allegations of “election rigging”.

Such claims included allegations of “suspicious” voters, claims of illegal voting, or count centre irregularities such as security issues or the validity of the vote-counting process.

The report also warned that far-right activists would have a similar opportunity to use social media to foment doubts and distrust in Ireland’s democratic processes this week.

“If their vote fails to materialise on 29 November, Irish far-right parties and candidates may use ’foreign interference’ conspiracy theories and narratives to justify more anti-democratic strategies going forward,” the report warned.

With reporting by Stephen McDermott.