Lost voices: Irish emigrants would like to vote

I repeat..Well they can't ..Never will...Too bad...Have a nice day.Get over it.

Georgybolix..Anything you say is just pure rubbish.You are not even Irish you fat toad. You don't even live here..Who the fu*k would want to listen to you. I don't know have you noticed this ya thick head,but on his topic nobody is talking to you. Stick that up you're racist mass immigration cakehole. ha ha

The article states that Australia and other countries offer their expatriates the right to vote - voting in Australia is actually compulsory and one is required to vote or be fined for not doing so, no matter what the excuse. As regards the argument that only taxpayers should vote, many residents inIreland may not pay taxes due to their financial circumstances but they still have a vote. In the past, not everybody was allowed to vote, only property owners and taxpayers, the more properties one owned the more votes one had. Are we advocating a return to that iniquitous system? It plagued Northern Ireland up until recently keeping Catholics who didn't own property out of the electoral system.

sirpeter aka antoman: Readers want to see an exchange of ideas here. You apparently have none. No one wants your kind of empty abuse, it's just stupid. It's neither entertaining nor instructive. Crawl away back to Fianna Fail HQ, they need all the election workers they can find. Leave people who have ideas and information exchange them here--you just don't belong.

Georgy ..The goofs in Dublin know where you are,and they are glad as to where you are.

The claim that there are 3 million Irish passports outside Ireland is utter unsustainable. It comes from the Irish Foreigh Ministry. How do they know? They are notoriously sloppy and lazy with statistics. How can they know where a particular Irish passport holder is at any given time? To take an example, I hold an Irish passport. Do the goofs in Dublin know where I am? Can they say whether I am in Ireland or in New Guinea? Of course not. Yet we are asked to believe that these jerks know how many Irish citizens are abroad, when they don't even know how many Chinese are in Dublin!

Nicole--What you say is nonsense. Your ID sounds Italian. I assume you know that Italians abroad get to vote--Italy is a normal country, not Leprechaunland. Your reference "there are 35 million Americans who claim Irish decent (US Census)" is uninformed. On the United States census you list as many ethnic origins as you like. People can fill in: Irish, Italian, Scottish, French..." or any number of nationalities. Well over 20 million tick "Italian" as one of their ethnic heritages--but the Italian govt does not use that as an excuse to deny the vote to their citizens. In any case it is utterly inane on your part to claim that listing "Irish" as one of your ancestors' ethnicities is a statement of Irish citizenship, even less of a predictor of the intention to vote in an election in a foreign country.

Well they can't ..never will...Too bad...Have a nice day

Theory? According to a recent article in the Irish Times (Jan 27th), there are 3 million Irish passports outside of Ireland. Thus, if all emigrants where allowed to vote, and did, then this would surely have a significant effect on any Irish election. I guess the "theory" in Mr. Flanagan's argument comes in on the fact that emigrants of other countries don't exercise this vote too frequently. Moreover, if there are 35 million Americans who claim Irish decent (US Census), and given that an Irish passport is obtainable through a grandparent - if even 1/6 of Irish-Americans can, and do, exercised this right - then, in theory, there would be more Irish voters in the US than in Ireland! The next question is, how many eligible-Irish passport holders, and thus emigrant voters, are there in the UK, continental Europe and Australia ...

The guy Flanagan says "in theory there would be more Irish voters outside of Ireland than in Ireland”. What "theory" is he going by? Does he know the total number of Irish citizens in the world? How can he know that? Does the Irish government keep records of how many Irish citizens are abroad? Ya gotta be joking--these jerks don't even know how many Poles are in Ireland! Have some sense, Flanagan, or you'll never graduate.

Note how the Irish bring their narrow-minded bigotry with them when they leave their country. This guy Kevin Dillon--happily no relation--whines that the Irish abroad don't pay tax and therefore don't deserve a vote. I guess he's unaware of the 100 or so countries, places like Ecuador and COlombia, which view citizenship as a right and privilege, regardless of how much taxes one pays, and accordingly organize voting rights for their citizens throughout the world. I bet guys like Dillon would laugh their smarmy laugh at Ireland being compared to "Third World" countries. Well I'll tell them--Ecuador, Colombia etc are a long shot more democratic than Leprechaunland. And if only taxpayers should vote (Dillon is obviously ignorant that this--"one man one vote"-- was one of the issues which started the conflagration in the North in the 1960s) does Dillon then deny the vote to folks who are unemployed, or elderly, or sick, and who therefore don't pay taxes? There's no doubt about it, the Irish produce a higher percentage of whining creeps than any other nationality.

"Kevin Dillon, originally from Sallins, Co. Kildare, and now living in Washington, D.C., agrees with this sentiment." This guy mentions that those who have left Ireland do not deserve to vote as they would not have to live with the consequences of their vote. This is utter nonsense. Those who made the really bad decisions that caused so many to have to leave also do not have to pay any cost of their inept decisions. It suits them to keep the status quo.

If they would let the exiles vote, then there would be more "Mail-in" ballots than Ballots cast almost

Irish Politicians have been falsifying the Irish voting system for over a decade by using opinions, which will hide the crime. It does not matter who votes. What we need is a police force that works first.