Nearly 10,000 ballot packs for the TCD Panel in the upcoming Seanad Éireann elections have been returned to Trinity, with April 18th the deadline for Trinity’s Academic Registry to reissue the ballots.
The 9,762 ballots were most likely returned due to the fact that electors were not available to receive and sign for the registered postal ballot packs at the address to which it was sent, or electors did not notify the College when changing their address.
57,732 ballots were sent out to the registered electors of the panel, which is made up of Trinity alumni.
In an email statement to The University Times, Leona Coady, Director of Academic Registry and Deputy Returning Officer for elections to the TCD Panel, explained that Trinity “sends to all candidates, for degrees and higher degrees, a claim form for completion to be included on the Register of Electors which includes the address to which their ballot paper should be sent”. The alumni dataset is updated by Academic Registry along with the Alumni Office, which coordinates the national and global networks of Trinity alumni.
Academic Registry is also contacted regularly by electors wishing to update their personal information, including current address. Updating personal records of alumni can also be done via the Trinity website.
With 9,762 ballots undelivered, amounting to nearly 17 per cent of all ballots registered, Academic Registry must now commence reissuing the undelivered ballot papers to electors who did not receive them, basing such work on the updated addresses sent into Academic Registry by March 14th of this year as well as electors who wish to have the ballots re-posted to the same address.
With undelivered ballots making up 16.9 per cent of all ballots sent out, a noticeable improvement has been seen from recent election years, with 21 per cent of ballots going undelivered in 2011 and 18 per cent in 2007.
Trinity’s alumni dataset – from which the Seanad Electoral Register is annually generated – is updated on a regular basis, with over 6,300 (11 per cent) of records being updated with new address details since the publication of the current register on July 1st, 2015.
There are 16 candidates running in the TCD Panel. Polls close at 11 am on Tuesday, April 26th. The count will then take place in the Public Theatre, known as the Exam Hall, in Front Square.
The University Times’s interviews with the 16 candidates for the TCD Panel can be read here.
