The Irish Times view on the Irish election: in praise of the pencil and the long count

For those who closely follow the twists and turns of nail-biting contests in every constituency, the contrast with the United States election could not be starker. There, the warping effect of the electoral college, an extreme form of winner-takes-all politics, meant the contest was in effect fought only in the six marginal states that decided the outcome.
In the United Kingdom, the most disproportional general election on record saw Labour winning two-thirds of seats with just over one-third of votes. Ironically, it was the British who first introduced the much fairer single transferable vote (STV) to Ireland in 1919 in an unsuccessful bid to stem Sinn Féin’s growth. It has served Ireland well, no matter how much it is disparaged by its originator as a source of political instability. Disproportionality of seat allocation in the 2020 general election, for example, was tiny, the lowest since 1982, and the fourth lowest ever.
Some 100 states across the world have eschewed first-past-the-post for forms of proportional representation. Ireland and Malta alone plumped for its STV manifestation. Its specific advantages in maximising voting efficiency by transferring unused votes to later preferences and allowing voters to wield their pencils to choose between individual candidates rather than parties, have given the public a strong sense of ownership of the system, which they have twice defended in referendums. Though it perhaps has also nurtured a parochialism or localism which are, arguably, STV’s main failing.
Although it somewhat favours the larger parties, the voting system has accurately reflected the realignment of Irish politics which has seen Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael lose their predominance, falling from a combined 70-80 per cent vote share throughout the history of the State to less than half that in 2020. Independents have flourished, and coalition politics are here to stay.
The count will take time. Technology could speed it up. But not for no reason do Irish voters feel attached to the long, exhausting but gripping exercise in democracy that is about to take place.