The mythical sophisticated Irish Electorate

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Evander73

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So, the sophisticated Irish Electorate (SIE), in it's wisdom, voted No, again!

Although the Seanad is a dysfunctional waste of money that adds nothing to the democratic process, the SIE voted to retain it. Although, it’s a retirement home/consolation prize for failed politicians, a crèche for aspiring politicians and/or chamber for rewarding political loyalty to the ruling party, the SIE still wants it, but why??

Enda hiding didn't help the optic of the Yes side, but it’s a side issue not relevant to the substantive issue as to the democratic validity of the Seanad. Like most referendums, so many unrelated issues get thrown into the mix, and the actual thing we’re voting on gets lost in the fog.

It’s the oppositions/president/judiciary’s job to keep the Dail honest, not some well paid talking shop for fat cat political cronies/elite of society. Also, the SIE can vote out the current government at the next election, if they feel like it.

There have been 12 different Seanad reform proposals since the formation of the Seanad and none have been implemented. The No side agree on reform, but when asked what this means, they either have no answer, or a multitude of different views which suggest the chances of any meaningful reform taking place is miniscule, and the status quo will continue. If you give the seanad the power to veto dail bills, you have a bunch of unelected academics etc dictating to the elected dail (hence us) as to the laws of the land. If you directly elect the Seanad, you end up with a competing house to the Dail which will impede legislate progress and slow down the whole political system by turning it into a battle ground between the two houses – just look at what’s happening in the US – stalemate.

The SIE are angry, which means that a lot of them want to give the government a bloody nose at all costs, but that could mean their opinion on any referendum issue is jaundiced from the start. If there was a referendum to "feed hungry babies" in the morning, a cohort of the SIE would vote No, just because they are angry with the Government over some totally unrelated matter. This irrational voting pattern, borne out of anger, is damaging the political process and makes every referendum a battle ground between what is right, and anti government sentiment.

Michael Lowry, Mick Wallace, The Healy Rea and Flynn dynasties are all a product of the SIE, no wonder FF are riding high in the opinion polls again!!

"The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter."

"It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried."
 
Who are you to say what is right? Is your opinion more valid or correct than the people who voted no? I voted to abolish the Seanad but I respect the decision reached by the majority of people who were bothered to vote.

Many of the same arguments against the Seanad could be made against the Dail. People vote for the politicians but they don't get a say in how the Dail is run. Not sitting for months during the summer. Poor attendance and empty chambers during debate. Inadequate leaders questions. An open bar and inappropiate behaviour during late night sittings. Large expenses. Some poor committees that have achieved nothing of note.

Announcing the closure of the Seanad was a political stunt at the time by Enda Kenny. Even though I voted to abolish it, the yes campaign was extremely weak. The €20m figure didn't stand up and it was insulting to some decent people in the Seanad. TD's weren't really in a position to throw stones at the work of senators.

You talk about the no side having no idea how to reform the Seanad but Enda Kenny talked about reforming the Dail when the Seanad was abolished but was light on detail. They should have reformed how committees work etc and then asked the people to abolish the Seanad..

I don't agree with the referendum result but I respect it. I will spare my abuse for the 60% who didn't vote rather than against the people who voted no.
 
Good points Evander, I agree with everything you said.
The Seanad is an elitist body was set up as a copy of the House of Lords in order to keep the elite happy in the decade and a half after independence. That's why Trinity graduates get a vote but other graduates don't. Why is one of the Houses of Parliament of this state elected by 1% of the people? Why are a majority of the people of this country in favour of not having a vote? The Seanad symbolises everything a republic isn't.

The problem with the politics in Ireland is not the quality of our politicians, they are a symptom of the problem. The root cause is the electorate. We have no respect for our own democracy. If we did we'd inform ourselves better and we'd bother to vote.
 
+1..very good post
 
The arguments put forward to abolish the Seanad were very weak. The only party who had a proper reasoned position was SF. Pearce Doherty articulated his party's position very well. I don't often agree with the Shinners, in fact this may be a first.
 

Who am I to say what is right? This is a forum for expressing ones opinion, and that's what I did.

Your arguments on the substantive issue emphasis exactly what I was trying to illustrate in my original post i.e. you don't address the substantive issue, but instead go off on many unrelated tangents. In the context of deciding on the contribution and validity of the Seanad, it's irrelevant that it may have been political stunt. If it was a political stunt to feed hungry babies, would that be a reason to vote against the proposal?

Whilst the Dail is ineffective and is in need of reform, overall it serves a definite and essential purpose, and therefore many of the same arguements against the Seanad cannot be applied to the Dail. Again , this argument is irrelevant to deciding on the validity of the Seanad - we definitely need the Dail, and the fact it is not a effective as it could be does not justify the existence of an irrelevant second chamber.

Certainly the Yes side was weak, and the money saving arguement may not have stood up to scrutiny, but again these are side issues.

You give some suggestions on how the Dail should be reformed, but offer none to the same question on the Seanad. As I said in my original post, allowing the Seanad a Veto or it to be directly elected causes fundamental problems for the operation of the legislature. I did be interested in any suggestions you may have to overcome these obstacles, or indeed any other meaningful suggestions on how the Seanad could be reformed to justify it's existence.

Lastly, I didn't "abuse" anyone - play the ball and not the man. You say you respect the decision of the majority of those who voted, as do I, in the sense that I accept it as a believer in democracy. The fact I don't agree with the outcome and criticise it with logical arguement is not disrespecting the decision, it's open debate on the matter, in a forum set up for just that purpose.
 

Look at the title of your thread. That's insulting to and disrespecting to the majority of people who voted to keep the Seanad. Just because you disagree with the decision doesn't mean the electorate is unsophisticated. The problem with the Irish Electorate is not that they are stupid or unsophisticated, it is that people don't respect the right to vote that they have. A turnover of 40% is a is disgrace.

If you want to have a thread about the Seanad, then title your thread better.
 
Sunny said:
The problem with the Irish Electorate is not that they are stupid or unsophisticated,
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Going from media reports I wonder how many of these "sophisticates" voted the wrong way simply because they couldn't understand the referendum as put to them on a ballot paper.

Excellent post Evander.
 

The title of the thread is in reference to the continued use of this misnomer by some patronising politicians. Unfortunatley, it's not specific to the Seanad referendum, as alluded to in my original post it continues to produce some unsophisticated result e.g. Ml Lowrys continued poll topping election in Tipperary - parish pump politics in action.

The myriad of reasons given for voting No to all kinds of questions suggests a lack of sophistication amongst the electorate in general - easily bought by cheap election promises, voting on the basis of anti government sentiment, or based on the mantra "vote no if you don't know". The answer to why you don't know often shows alot of people simply don't bother to inform themselves, and prefer to vote No in the comfort that they are sticking one to the Government because of the Haddington Road agreement/property tax etc, etc.

Obviously not everyone who voted No in this particular referendum did so on the basis of such spurious reasons. Some will have given it careful consideration and voted accordingly, but imo, as politically incorrect as it is to say, the Irish electorate, taken as a whole, is not very sophisticated.

I look forward to your counter argument to my specific view point in relation to the difficulties surrounding fundamental (not window dressing) Seanad reform.
 
Knuttell said:
Going from media reports I wonder how many of these "sophisticates" voted the wrong way simply because they couldn't understand the referendum as put to them on a ballot paper.

Excellent post Evander.
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Not many I would imagine. There also doesn't seem to be an abnormal amount of spoilt votes either. Also, if we are to take your view, it means that there were more unsophisticated voters on the yes side who voted the wrong way. Not to mention that people who would have voted yes stayed away and didn't vote. So you can't blame the decision on the no voters being too unsophisticated to understand what they were voting for. You can blame the apathy of the majority of people who would have voted yes if they had bothered their ass to vote.

Like I say, I think it should be abolished but I understand why the vote lost when you at how the campaign ran and the issue was handled.
 

I have already said three times I voted for the Seanad to be abolished and not reformed. That doesn't mean I think that the people who voted no were stupid or did so for alternative reasons. Even Sinn Fein couldn't bring their supporters with them so it wasn't an anti government vote.
 

We'll have to agree to disagree, so. I'd suggest it's more likely SF supporters did not vote in large numbers, rather than they voted No, and it was the disaffected Labour/FG vote, combined with the FF support which won the day.

For the record, unsophisticated is not my euphemism for stupid - parochial & distracted by unrelated issues would be more appropriate.
 
Leaving aside the slur on the nay-sayers (Evander73, acknowledging that perhaps some may have thought about it and decided to vote no is does not change the fact that the premise of the thread is that people have decided no and it must be due to foolishness), this mythical 1% has been bugging me. The numbers don't add up. the important number to identify and quantify the elite (rather than the pro-active) is the number of people entitled to a vote, not the number who do.
Given that more than 30% of the population have a degree of some description. And at a rough guess perhaps half through NUI or TCD - but for arguments sake say 1/3. That rough underestimate gives a potential electorate for the 6 college seats at about 10% of the population.
You have the various people (ahem politicians) on the various vocational panels but as that does not comprise tens of thousands of individuals it is not going to have a substantive impact on the potential electorate.
Still nowhere near a universal suffrage but certainly not the 1% quoted widely.

On the whole, I agree that in referenda in Ireland, the no vote is made up of No and Don't Know and screw the government. As a rule I subscribe to the notion that if you are a Don't Know you should spoil your vote - the message then is far clearer. (If you are screw the government you should really wait until a general election) A mechanism whereby a certain percentage of spoilt votes invalidates a result would then allow for path to genuine re-engagement as opposed to the guess-work that currently goes into that favourite Irish institution, the re-referendum. In this case though, I suspect that the No vote was considerably clearer a No vote than those for some of the constitutional amendments to accommodate various EU treaties, so that leaves the other two sets. I suspect they were a minority cohort this time. Again, given the question asked was not as complex or arcane as those for the EU treaty referenda (though burrowing through the constitution to delete the Seanad is not as simple an exercise as saying yay or nay to its existence) it seems more likely to me that people answered the question asked rather than being motivated by confusion or the desire to give two fingers to the government.
 
Sunny said:
I voted to abolish the Seanad but I respect the decision reached by the majority of people who were bothered to vote.
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I votes Yes and I don't respect the majority decision at all! I think the SIE got it very wrong and the Enda made a balls of it. There will be no substantive reform to either house now.

I also think that they have given FF some legitimacy again which sickens me.
 

The premise of the thread is not that the No vote was due to foolishness, as I said, IMO a sizable portion of the electorate, as you acknowledge above, vote to give the two fingers to the government. Your logic seems reasonable in narrowing down the level of "don't know, so vote no's", but it doesn't follow that just because the question was not so complex as an EU treaty that the level of people wanting to screw the government should be less.

Even if we take this logic to be true, and you suggest the 'screw the government' nay sayers were a minority cohort this time, this grouping could have been decisive, considering the referendum was only won by a relatively small percentage. I think it is commonly accepted that any unpopular sitting government finds it hard to win the peoples votes, particularly one on the cusp of bring in yet another austerity budget.

So when looked at statistically, 48% of the electorate, who even felt the issue relevant enough to vote on, voted against the Seanad's continued existence, with this slim margin possibly down to the anti government voters - hardly a ringing endorsement of this institution.
 
I think this vote seeks to send a message to Enda and our German overlords that we will not be dictated to.
 
Evander73 said:
The premise of the thread is not that the No vote was due to foolishness, as I said, IMO a sizable portion of the electorate, as you acknowledge above, vote to give the two fingers to the government.
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Actually I did not state the a "sizeable" portion of the electorate ... swear-vote. In fact I would would be strongly of the opinion that that is usually a very small proportion, considerably smaller than the Don't Know. Perhaps I am more positive but based on any conversations I have had prior to this vote and others, it is rare the person who counts screw the government as a reason.

Evander73 said:
Your logic seems reasonable in narrowing down the level of "don't know, so vote no's", but it doesn't follow that just because the question was not so complex as an EU treaty that the level of people wanting to screw the government should be less.
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We will have to disagree on this one I think. The more a person understands a question, the more likely they are to answer the question put instead of responding with the voting equivalent of lashing out instinctively. A question which is difficult to understand is more likely to cause voter disengagement, voter discomfort and, if they vote, in a voting FU.


The margin is narrow, it is hardly a ringing endorsement of either a yes or a no, but until we have to start voting the way we were told to write English essays (i.e. back up your answer) we are only speculating on motive. Railing against a result we don't like by resorting to the schoolyard tactic and saying the winning side is stupid is not exactly grown up.
 
I'm quite proud that we voted no. This was a cynical populist stunt from the start and people largely saw through it. I'm sure some of the no vote was a protest, no more than much of the yes vote came from people who blindly believe the government will always act in the best interests of the people. In between, you would have have people with philosophical views on whether any role exists for an upper house.

The 'yes' side seemed to focus on cost savings and the elitist nature of the Seanad election process. I heard little in the way of debate from them on why, even if these issues were addressed, the upper house could still serve no function.

In my innocence I do believe it to be an additional 'control' against the railroading through of inappropriate legislation by government and indeed against 'group think'. The massive government majority in the current dail highlights that situations can arise where power can end up concentrated in the hands of a small number who do not need to respect dissenting opinions.

I have to absolutely disagree with evander. We are all entitled to express our opinions, even on the dubiousness of the sophistication of others' opinions. For me, however, I don't believe the rationale behind the aggregate 'no' vote is less valid than the aggregate 'yes' vote.
 
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