Decision time for Clare’s 87,000 voters

CLARE’S 107 polling stations, which will contain 173 ballot boxes, will open at 7am this Friday morning as a record 16 candidates seek to represent the constituency in the 31st Dáil.
A total of 85,360 registered voters are entitled to vote in the four-seater constituency, along with 1,600 voters on what is called a supplementary list. In the 2007 General Election, 79,555 people were eligible to vote in the county.
“The supplementary list is published after the official register of electors, which is updated annually. They are people who arrive back to Clare and find that they are not on the register and want to get on it.
“That would bring up the total to roughly 87,000, of which 4,200 of those are in Limerick City,” Clare returning officer, Pat Wallace told The Clare Champion.
“I supply the manpower and the location but not the ballot boxes to Parteen and Shannon Banks,” Mr Wallace explained.
“I arrange Parteen school and the scout hall in Shannon Banks. They’re the two locations. There’s four polling booths within the scout hall and there’s five in Parteen school but one of them belongs to the Clare constituency. The other four belong to Limerick East,” he added.
Approximately 400 people will be employed across the county on Friday, 360 of whom will be working in the polling stations, with two people designated for each. One will be the presiding officer. About 40 additional people will also be working, six of whom are classed as emergency presiding officers.
Voting will cease at 10pm on Friday and the count will start at 9am on Saturday in the West County Hotel, Ennis.
“We verify the vote first from the individual polling stations. We’ve to compare the number of votes we find in each box with what the respective presiding officers gives us on his or her tally from the night before,” Mr Wallace said.
Sixty people, counting in 30 pairs of two, will calculate whom the Clare electorate have voted for. Thirty ballot boxes will be opened at a time. A total of 80 people will be employed in total on Saturday on official General Election duty.
Candidates who have paid a deposit of €500 and who fail to reach 25% of the quota at elimination stage, will forfeit their deposit.
Voters will have a record nine Independent candidates to choose from when they vote on Friday, along with three Fine Gael, two Fianna Fáil, one Labour and one Green Party candidate.
Come late on Saturday night, the identity of Clare’s four representatives in the 31st Dáil should be known.