There's An Election On The Way

Are you registered to vote? It’s a question that everyone who wants a say in the future of the country should ask themselves, as the political parties begin to shape up for a General Election, on a date yet to be ecided over the next couple of months. Because if you’re not in, you have no say in who wins...

The pundits keep telling us that the Irish political landscape could be changed utterly after the upcoming election. But that might not be as straightforward a proposition as the commentators have been suggesting: for a start, there’s a real danger that many people feel so alienated from politics that they won’t bother to vote at all.
You might recall that in 2004, American purveyors of quasi-ironic hipster garb Urban Outfitters launched a t-shirt emblazoned with the slogan ‘Voting is for Old People’.
There followed a short-lived pseudo-controversy, as chillingly earnest bloggers and other civic-minded pundits, politicians and morons-in-general lined up to condemn Urban Outfitters for their irresponsibility in attempting to lead the yoof of America from the path of enfranchised righteousness.
The company was forced to issue a statement explaining, for the benefit, you might say, of lame-brains everywhere, that the shirt was “never meant to be misconstrued as anti-voting”. The unfortunate 26-year-old designer said he had intended to “point a finger at all of us who’ve been so apathetic in the past.” Well, maybe. Either way, his t-shirt was soon discontinued.
Now he’s homeless on the streets of San Francisco, his skinny jeans all in tatters, a shadow of his former self.
I made that last part up. But the point is this: if Urban Outfitters had wanted to defend their shirt on the grounds of accuracy – never mind irony – they could have counted on the support of an army of political scientists. The fact is that for years the youth of Ireland – just like their counterparts in the USA – have been more than slightly apathetic. The hope is that 2011 will see a change in that pattern.
“I think the upcoming [Irish] election is really interesting for young people,” says John Garry, a political scientist at Queens University and co-author of The Irish Voter, “because there is so much anger at the political system and so much raw hatred of politicians, and that is particularly held by young people. So you’d think there’d be a revolution coming. But it’s offset by the fact that young people are notorious for not turning out to vote.”
In fact, Urban Outfitters could well have released a follow-up t-shirt, adding that ‘Voting is for Rich People’.
“It’s something you find in all democracies,” says Garry, “that people who are less well-off, no matter how you measure social class or wealth, are less likely to turn out.
“This might sound like a left-wing analysis,” he adds, “and I suppose it is, but middle-class people often benefit from the status quo. They generally do OK out of the system, so they are more inclined to be part of the game. Poorer people have less to lose, and so less inclination to get involved.”

ALIENATION
Still it is impossible to completely stifle the feeling that we may be about to see history being made. Ireland is due to go to the polls very soon, probably in March. The latest opinion poll puts the long-dominant Fianna Fáil at only 14% of the popular vote, the party’s lowest ever. On the day this magazine went to press, disaffected Fianna Fáil backbencher Ned O’Keeffe claimed on RTÉ radio that he wouldn’t be surprised if his party won only a dozen seats – they currently hold 77.
The old two-and-a-half party system, dating from the Civil War, whereby Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael square up against each other while Labour tags along in third place, is almost certainly at an end. Labour is now the second most popular party, and has a glimmer of hope of leading a government for the first time. Meanwhile, Sinn Féin hopes to grasp the opportunity to establish itself as a major player in southern politics, with Gerry Adams resigning from Stormont to run for a seat in Louth. The Green Party, Fianna Fáil’s partner in coalition, faces extermination.
But, and here’s the rub, it all depends on who turns out to vote on election day. Although violent distaste for the current political establishment and resentment at their appalling mismanagement of the nation’s finances, might cause many people to change their usual voting habits, it might just cause as many people – especially young people – not to vote at all.
“There’s a funny tension between anger and alienation from politics, between the distrust people might feel and the fact that they are less likely to vote,” says Garry.
One of the main reasons people don’t vote, he adds, is that they often simply aren’t registered.

SOVEREIGNTY
Will a massive changing of the guard make any material difference? Garry suggests that we have to be realistic.
“The basic deal was struck by the current government and there’s very little wriggle room,” he observes. “It is true to say that we don’t have any sovereignty and you have to have sovereignty for an election to mean something.”
Others disagree with that gloomy prognosis. That same feeling that Ireland’s sovereignty is slipping away could actually be the very reason that many people feel spurred to vote this time round, according to Bart Storan, Youth Officer at Amnesty International Ireland and the former manager of pro-Lisbon Treaty college campaign group. Generation Yes.
“I think young people are interested in politics, particularly now and more so than before,” he says. “There’s a feeling that the country is being taken away and decisions are being taken away and people recognise that the democratic process is a way of getting involved.”
He believes that the political parties could mobilise young voters, if they really engaged with the issues that affect them.
“Things like emigration are becoming political taglines, rather than the subject of real debate,” Storan warns, adding that the public sector recruitment ban is a policy that hurts young people most.
“The biggest employer in the state is the civil service so the moratorium on civil service appointments is something that is hitting young people disproportionately, because they can’t get a civil service job if they graduated after 2008.”
The biggest problem Generation Yes had to negotiate (and the basic point that Urban Outfitters t-shirt is getting at) is that attempts to get young people to vote nearly always sound condescending and irritating. True to form, when Generation Yes first launched it had a terrible logo with a smiley face and a thumbs up.
“We didn’t use that logo in the end. We changed it when people said ‘That logo is naff’,” says Storan. “The negative feedback proved a point to us that young people want to be taken seriously. They’re well educated and they can legitimately expect to be taken seriously and listened to.”
Fair enough. The first step is making sure that you’re on the register. Do it now, before it’s too late. You can make up your mind who to give your preferences to later.