Electoral Reform committee  Certainly, in situations of lower preferences when votes are transferred, we can see that some parties are very transfer attractive. They may not be that many people's first choice, but lots of people kind of like them. In this country, for example, the Green Party often has that

Electoral Reform committee  I wouldn't say spoiled voting happens very often, because if you write anything on a ballot paper it becomes a spoiled vote and it's invalid. There are some spoiled votes by people who feel so strongly they can't refrain from writing so and so is a such and such, but there are no

Electoral Reform committee  Well, you only have referendums on constitutional change. Some of the biggest and most important important things never went anywhere near a referendum. When we decided to repay bondholders in our bankrupt banks with public money, to the tune of tens and tens and tens of billions

Electoral Reform committee  Generally speaking, the bigger the issue and the more clear-cut the issue, the more sense it makes to have a referendum. My colleague mentioned the referendum last year on same-sex marriage. That clearly meant a lot to a lot of people. It was very clear-cut. People could see the

Electoral Reform committee  Well, the truth is that nearly all PR electoral systems look pretty complicated from the outside, if you try to understand them in every detail, but for the voters they're all pretty straightforward. I really can't think of any electoral system where the reports have said the vot

Electoral Reform committee  I think there are systems that we might think are complicated. The Swiss system strikes me as very complicated, but the Swiss don't find it so. They did some tests in Scotland before adopting STV. People did lots of focus group studies, and there were many voters who said this so

Electoral Reform committee  To begin with, I'm sure voters are not quite clear what they have to do. I keep going back to the Scottish experience. The Scottish experience is a very good one, because they have different electoral systems in local government, in Scottish assembly elections, and in European el

Electoral Reform committee  I guess the argument is that democracy is not just about majorities; it's about minorities. It's about blending minorities to make political decisions, and that's quite difficult if the minorities are not represented.

Electoral Reform committee  It's hard to envisage an online voting system that has a paper component to it. One concern about online voting here and in a lot of countries would be the secrecy of the ballot, which means in this country not just that you don't have to show anyone else how you voted, but you c

Electoral Reform committee  Yes, I think that's it.

Electoral Reform committee  That's used in Scotland and in parts of New Zealand with their electoral system, but it wasn't known when we had our experience of electronic voting. I think such was that experience that no Irish government is going to explore the effectiveness or otherwise of the Scottish syste

Electoral Reform committee  The problem with our referendums is that we have a referendum on any change in the constitution, however marginal. Some of those changes are not very interesting to the general public, so when we wanted to be able to cut judges' pay as part of dealing with the economic crisis, th

Electoral Reform committee  No, no initiatives, although several of the parties put forward relatively young candidates. At the end of the day, for all those young voters out there that nobody's mobilizing, you would expect parties to go out and start mobilizing. That's one of the things that Sinn Fein actu

Electoral Reform committee  I don't think we would dare make a recommendation. I think we would respect the sovereignty of the Canadian people on that.

Electoral Reform committee  From a professional point of view, I'd love to see the single transferable vote work in some other system. A friend and colleague of mine in British Columbia devoted a great deal of time and effort trying to get the single transferable vote in Canada. I'd love to see him get it.