Please Do Vote. It’s Your Right.

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Regarding The Forth Coming Presidential Election.

SHORT VERSION: Many of us completely understand the feeling “I’m browned off with the lot of them!” …Many Ireland people personally have been there. Trying to still contain those feelings, many same people still get up and graciously pay their respect to those in the past that’s given their last drop of living blood, so that we all today even have the equal right to vote alongside our fellow country man and woman. We are blessed to live in a country where we can equally vote. There are global states where even this right is curtailed or denied still. What do some of want to do with the blessed right we still have? Dishonor it and dishonor those that dies who help us gain such an important basic right.

You might not like the presidential candidates – but at the very least, pay respect to honoured dead, by doing what they now can’t – VOTE – even if it’s for a candidate least disliked. Please don’t spoil your vote. It’s your stronger chance to speak up and yes, protest by actually voting. Please do vote in the coming presidential election. It’s your democracy. Use the right you still have, to vote.

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IN GREATER DETAIL: The way our voting system is setup, it comes with advantages and some disadvantages. In regard to the coming presidential election, those choosing to deliberately spoil their vote, should firstly know a number of those before they do on the day.

1. Fianna Fail and Fine Gael will greatly thank you, as they will again gain from a vote spoiling effort, far more so than the solo opposition candidate.
2. Many other voters feel that spoiling your own opportunity to vote, is akin to spitting on the graves that have long fought and long died for our modern Irish democracy – including your right to be able to vote in the first place.
3. Vote spoilers will be giving Fianna Fail and Fine Gael many more future opportunities to get away with even more stuff, if either of their candidates wins.
4. It’s a half-a-second wasted protest action – versus what could be better, a seven year protest action if you pick an opposition candidate – even if you least dislike them.

We won’t advocate for a presidential candidate here. This post is not about that. The concern is about people spoiling their vote. Many thousands of us absolutely get why some are thinking about doing this. Every day we hear of some quiet stuff that elected are up to, or have already done. Every week we gain reports about how useless some top rank are within the state, at their appointed roles. As one department staffer told us about one boss and their ability to get things done: “He’s two speeds. Dead slow and stop”

Many totally get why some people want to protest. Many people are rightly incensed over a good few things locally and nationally, not also including being taxed, levied, charged, left state department abandoned or ignored while being used as a cash machine by FF and FG elected. We all get the frustrations of others as sick children and elderly are left waiting years just to see a hospital appointment be arranged. All this and much, much more is playing on the minds of those that are left with little ability to protest.

Now we have a presidential election coming. However, as much as we like or dislike the three left standing and running, they do so under a process that’s needs to improved, not helped to be further destroyed by the spoiling of votes.

Here’s the core of the matter. Spoiled votes helps Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. We won’t bore you with technical explanations – but fundamentally, spoiled votes helps the very parties that are hated most, by people who think spoiling their votes is a way to ‘stick it to them’.

Spoiling a vote is actually doing them a favour. A great deal of remaining votes, the valid ones left to be counted, will be more for the government candidates. Hundreds of thousands of Ireland people respect the efforts of great women and men who have long struggled for over 900 years, so that today we have an Ireland where we get to decide our own leaders. Yes, even if some of us don’t like an occasional result. …Then, we still have an ability to open criticise the disliked without fear of being executed, targeted by a state leader, dropped from a balcony, poisoned by a weaponised umbrella or simply sent to a gulag, never to be seen or heard of, again!

Democracy is not perfect. It has serious faults. It needs updating. We say to a better Participatory democracy system. However, even now it’s still the lesser of all other government ruling ability evils out there, regarding how to run a state day to day. Many of the others ways being “This is how we are telling you to think and behave! Step out of line, you’re a dead person!” So, while we honour our past dead and their centuries of efforts to create a more free and better Ireland, we continue choosing in their honour, to go out and vote when we can.

Onn more that one occasion many has voted for a least disliked character – rather than for a candidate that stood out amid the rest. Sometimes, a lot of time – let’s be honest – we are not spoilt for choice. It appears this way for the 2025 presidential race? However, out of respect for those gone before us, citizens do get up, get out and use the little democratic power you and all still have, that has been generation passed onto us by the efforts of those that fill our history books. That’s why in great part, many still vote. We pay an honour to deceased and an ambition that many of them never got to see or do, themselves.

Back to present day. The reality is that spoiled votes will indeed help the very parties that a lot of us completely dislike. You know who they are. Yes. Your potential spoiled vote might be seen as a form of protest – for a brief second – before it’s then swept aside, so that remaining valid votes then puts the hated parties candidates further up in higher vote count. If you want your protest to be seen for more than a second, but instead, be seen for seven years, vote for the person most not disliked – if need be, instead of further enabling the very parties you say you dislike most.

We rare get the chance to democratic vote, so why then shoot ourselves further in the foot, by using that gained opportunity to reward the very parties we oppose! It simply end-result, does not make sense. You can spoil your vote for a half-second protest before it’s then passed over – or you can actually vote for a person that could represent your protest for many years. Now, that’s truly ‘sticking it to’ the government parties you dislike!

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