News Analysis: Farewell to the old Irish custom of voting early, voting often

Personation, or vote-stealing, has long been an integral part of the political processes in Northern Ireland, with the slogan of "vote early and vote often" a traditional one at election times. Its existence was no secret. My grandmother's parlour, one election day in the Sixties, was filled with hats and coats to give personators a change of clothing for their numerous return visits to the polling stations.

Leading politicians would cheerfully talk about the vote-stealing exploits of their supporters, not just admitting the practice but bragging about it.

One politician, now a venerated peer, recalled the protocol as: "You didn't take the other side's votes. You only did your own side. It was for somebody who was maybe sick, people who would be voting for you anyway."

In other words, in the old days it was considered bad form for a Unionist personator to steal a nationalist vote; what he did was to vote on behalf of Unionist electors unable or too apathetic to vote themselves.

Vote-stealing was hardly regarded as a crime. Regulations were lax and the whole thing had the sanction of tradition, if not of the law. It tended to be viewed as an extension of the old Unionist system which included much gerrymandering and manipulation of boundaries.

Although the existence of vote-stealing was undeniable, its scale was always in doubt, and there were few cases where it was claimed to be crucial in election results.

But the entry of Sinn Fein to the political arena in the early Eighties shattered all the old patterns. The republicans, according to other parties, simply stole every vote they could get their hands on. In a 1982 poll, more than 700 people arrived at polling stations to find their vote had already been cast. The following year there were almost 1,000 such cases, and 149 arrests of alleged personators.

The Conservative government of the day claimed that up to 20 per cent of Sinn Fein's votes were obtained by electoral abuse. The laws were tightened, with voters required to produce medical cards or other identification. This led to the establishment of a thriving cottage industry in the production of fake medical cards, showing that the tighter laws posed no insuperable difficulty to determined fraudsters.

There were also suspicions centring on the unusually large numbers of postal votes. One man asked for a postal vote because he was house-bound. In another election he again applied, but this time said he was a long-distance lorry driver.

The Social Democratic and Labour Party, Sinn Fein's principal competitor for the nationalist vote, has continued to claim that the republicans engage in organised vote-stealing. This allegation is strongly denied by Sinn Fein, and many feel the heyday of vote-stealing has passed. For one thing, the republican vote has soared so steeply over the past decade that it could not be all due to personation. The widespread view is that Sinn Fein has developed such a professional political machine – arguably the most efficient of any party – that it has little need to resort to illegality.

Yet the Electoral Fraud Act, which came into force this year, introduced a battery of new measures. In place of the household registration form used elsewhere in the UK, adults in Northern Ireland had to fill in individual forms. On these, they were obliged to state their date of birth, national insurance number and nationality, and give their signature.

These measures have resulted in an unprecedented drop in the electorate of 130,000 votes, wiping 11 per cent of voters off the register. This swath cut through the electorate could have significant political consequences, since the new numbers will be in effect for the Northern Ireland Assembly elections in May.

Under the proportional representation system, Assembly members need between 5,000 and 7,000 votes to secure election. With constituencies on average each losing more than 7,000, this could, in many cases, significantly alter the political complexion. The point then arises of whether the drop of 130,000 represents a flushing of fraud from the system or whether it has disfranchised large numbers of genuine electors.

The chief electoral officer, Dennis Stanley, welcomed the outcome, saying: "We are very pleased we have had around a 90 per cent response overall. It reflects a lot of hard work by our staff."

A different and more questioning note was struck by Seamus Magee, the Northern Ireland head of the Electoral Commission, which oversees electoral matters. He said yesterday: "We are not clear why such a large number of people have not registered and will be undertaking detailed research to examine this. We would encourage the public to use the rolling registration process."

The figures were welcomed by the Tory Northern Ireland spokesman, Quentin Davies, who had pressed for the inclusion of national insurance numbers on the new form. He said: "This news vindicates our concern at electoral fraud and our insistence on tough new measures to control it. It looks as though a large proportion of these 130,000 can only be accounted for by previous false names being removed."

One Northern Ireland political veteran differed, saying: "This has disfranchised genuine people. Most of this is not fraud. The number of votes being stolen in any constituency is probably in the hundreds, not the thousands. Just think of the logistics of trying to steal thousands of votes. The people who have not returned their forms tend to be the least educated and living in the poorest areas, people who are unable or averse to filling in forms."

This view was corroborated by one man employed to collect forms from a Belfast district. He said: "There was a lot of irritation, even resistance, in working class areas, especially Protestant ones. Many had 'lost' their forms, and many didn't know their national insurance number."

An electoral expert said: "The drop is probably due to three factors. There's the benign fraudster, whose son had maybe moved to England but he kept him on the roll anyway in case he'd come home. Then there's the real fraudsters, who packed the register with people who had moved on and left the country, and they simply kept their name on because that was a good way to get the votes in. Then there's the couldn't-care-less person; there are people out there who just never respond to anything that comes in a buff-coloured envelope."

At present, there seems no clear answer to the question of whether the anti-fraud measures have had the unwanted effect of stripping votes from genuine people, and whether the exercise has been a blow for democracy, or a blow against it.