General Election 2020

By The bored journalist on January 15, 2020 • ( 1 )

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has announced the general election will be held on Saturday, February 8th.

Ireland’s historic 1918 election was held on a Saturday in December while the Nice Referendum and Children’s Referendum were also held on Saturdays.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar tweeted:

“I hope the Saturday vote will cause less inconvenience to parents than a weekday, and will make it easier for students and people working away from home to vote.”

Interestingly, important to note with only three and a half weeks to the election, anyone who registered to vote in the last eight months is NOT (yet) eligible to vote in #ge2020. The reason why is due to the register of electors is officially updated every year on February 15th, a date fixed in law (Electoral Act 1992, s.1).

Anyone who has registered in the last few months, wouldn’t be – the new register, including their details, would not take effect in time. You can, however, apply to be added to the supplementary register of electors.

Call the Franchise Section of your local city/council tomorrow, and see if they have (or will accept) Form RFA2 to get you onto a supplement for the 2019-20 Register.

Those who are not on last year’s register or the supplementary register have until the close of business on January 22nd to return the necessary forms to their local authority.

As of January 15th, the website Voter.ie is under mantinance.

Minister of State John Halligan T.D. has confirmed he is not running again for election and will retire from politics.

Mr John Halligan tweeted:

“Having been involved in politics for over 30 years, I now feel the time is right to start a new chapter and devote more time to my family.
To serve the people of #Waterford in government at local and national level has been the most profound privilege.”

Here are links different parties policies:

https://www.finegael.ie/our-policies/ https://www.fiannafail.ie/our-policies/

https://www.labour.ie/manifesto/

https://www.socialdemocrats.ie/our-policies/

https://www.sinnfein.ie/policies

https://www.greenparty.ie/our-ideas/

https://news.pbp.ie/policies/

More to follow.