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AS PAPERS POURED out of ballot boxes around the country yesterday following the Presidential election and blasphemy referendum, there was plenty of talk about spoiled votes.
Rather than mark their Presidential preferences, some citizens took this opportunity to scrawl political messages or the names of alternative candidates on the ballot paper, thus discounting their vote.
‘A WASTE OF TAXPAYER MONEY’, ‘DUSTIN THE TURKEY’ and ‘NO TO ABORTION’ were just some of the sentiments expressed.
‘May God forgive you’
At the Convention Centre yesterday, TheJournal.ie spoke with a number of people counting votes throughout the day.
Voting got under way shortly after 9am. By 11:30am, a handful of anti-abortion messages had been reported as had one ‘Bobby Sands’. There were also some tastefully drawn male body parts.
‘Dustin the Turkey’ was a firm favourite on ballot papers, one counter told us. Another counter said that 20 votes had been cast in Terenure for journalist Gemma O’Doherty.
O’Doherty had hoped to gain enough local authority support to make it onto the ballot herself. She did receive one nomination from Laois County Council but was unsuccessful in securing enough nominations.
Before announcing constituency results, each returning officer at the count must adjudicate on invalid or spoiled votes.
It’s part of formalities throughout the count, Dublin City Sheriff James Barry told TheJournal.ie.
Sorting through ballot papers believed to be invalid in the Dublin North West constituency, returning officers yesterday discarded several ‘NONE OF THE ABOVE’ messages as well as a ‘CHRIST IS KING’ message.
‘Prefer Bertie’
That same sentiment was also expressed in the Cavan/Monaghan district.
In Dublin North West, ‘STOP THE SIEGE OF GAZA’ was spotted written across one ballot paper.
As we await the results for Dublin Central at the Convention Centre here are the spoiled votes from Dublin North West - plenty of anti-abortion messages in there. pic.twitter.com/h7zjRwzs6f
— Cónal Thomas (@ConalThomas) October 27, 2018
‘TROTSKY, LEON’ featured too, while one spoiled voter asked the country ‘WOULD PREFER BERTIE 2025?’
In the final tally for the Dublin South Central constituency, there were more spoiled votes (1.75%) than there were valid votes for candidate Gavin Duffy (1.7%).
This campaign saw Duffy and four other candidates take on incumbent President Michael D Higgins, who was re-elected to the Áras for another seven years.
Once the counting of spoiled votes is witnessed and complete, returning officers stamp ‘INVALID’ across the ballot paper and proceed with the tally.
In one instance, a voter wrote ‘R-E-P-E-N-T’ – a letter in each box marked beside the Presidential candidates.
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This just in, people are basically sheep and can be manipulated very easily.
Let me guess… You consider yourself above it all?
‘Mainstream media’ works the same way. It distorts headlines & manipulates people. It often plays on peoples emotions rather than their intellect.
We often read newspapers or online news sites, and taking what we read there as ‘fact’. Most newspapers are far from neutral. We are really reading, is the agendas and opinion of the editorial board, of the news site.
Everything is carefully spun to appear as ‘neutral’.
T.I.M., Install adblock and ghostery and you will be above it it all because you won’t see any of the crap Facebook tries to feed you about “OMG this woman is hated by the beauty industry” and trying to sign you up to Farmville.
The faster people get over their obsession with social media the faster we will grow as a society.
#like
I bet this only works on women.
#sexistbuttrue
Richard – Humans are social by nature. Social media will remain.
“Social” media ironically is anything but social. That’s the problem. It’s a platform for advertising and information gathering.
Social media is social in the context of Internet usage.
Not in the context of human interaction which is what Facebook would have you believe.
I was in a good mood before I read this article!
u ok hun txt me xx don’t mind de begrudgers deyll get what’s cummin’ to dem.
Stopped using Facebook years ago!
Ditto. A very large waste of power, racks, cooling, cabling and servers in my opinion. Not to mention brain power.
“Not having a Facebook account” is the new “I don’t own a TV.”
I don’t think you can compare tv to Facebook.
I wasn’t comparing the two. I was comparing the two statements.
You were comparing by implication.
No I wasn’t.
Yes you were.
No he weren’t.
Yes I wasn’t?
Anyone know what the next big social site will be?
If I knew, I wouldn’t be sharing it!
Pornbook
No different than staggering articles with dubious statistical information over time to sway opinion.
The property prices articles in the journal?
Facebook is the single most destructive force to productivity in the history of mankind. It should be destroyed.
This is a game changer. One-seventh of the world’s population is in the hands of these deviants.
I’ve noticed for some time that the App Sky news has also been ‘introducing’ foreign bits for a while now. They have invariably been from the US and Pakistan. And they have always been about some violent outrage which smacks of the same thing as Facebook.
But Facebook is a very big and frightening machine that can and by the looks of things will be used against us.
Like voting. Protest and survive!
have your say