The Supreme Court has ruled that requiring people who support a non-party Dáil candidate to travel in person to a designated local authority office to verify their signatures is unconstitutional. The Court held that this part of the nomination process placed a disproportionate burden on candidates, but upheld the requirement to obtain 30 assentors and rejected the appellants’ other constitutional challenges.
The judgment, delivered by Chief Justice Murray on 13 November 2006, concerned appeals brought by Thomas King, Benedict Cooney and Denis Riordan against decisions of the High Court. The proceedings challenged sections of the Electoral Act 1992, as amended in 2002, governing nominations for Dáil elections.
Under the law, a candidate whose nomination was not authenticated by a registered political party had to obtain the assent of 30 registered electors in the constituency. Each assentor also had to attend the designated local authority office, produce photographic identification and sign the nomination paper in the presence of an official.
The appellants said the rules made it difficult and time-consuming to gather the required support. Evidence described long journeys to designated offices, time away from work, lost pay and childcare difficulties. The Court accepted that the travel and attendance requirement could impose a heavy burden, particularly where offices were far from parts of a constituency.
It found a real risk that the process could impede a candidate from lodging validated nomination papers in reasonable time and force candidates to spend a disproportionate part of the election campaign organising attendance. The Court was not satisfied that the State had shown there were no less onerous administrative arrangements for verifying signatures. It declared section 46(4B) unconstitutional in its entirety, including the requirement for each assentor to attend personally.
The Court rejected the broader challenge to the requirement for 30 signatures. It said the State had a legitimate interest in protecting the integrity of elections and that asking a candidate to obtain support from 30 electors was not, in itself, excessively burdensome or disproportionate. It also rejected the claim that obtaining an assent breached the secrecy of the ballot, distinguishing support for a candidate from disclosure of how a person voted.
The Court also dismissed the claim that the rules unfairly discriminated against non-party candidates compared with candidates of registered parties. It considered the two groups to be in different positions, noting that registered parties were subject to statutory requirements and party candidates had to pass through internal selection processes.
Finally, it rejected Riordan’s challenge to the ballot-paper description “non-party” instead of “independent”. The Court said the Oireachtas could regulate candidate descriptions and that the chosen term was not shown to be misleading.
The Court therefore upheld one ground of appeal and dismissed the rest. It ordered a declaration that section 46(4B) was unconstitutional; it did not strike down the 30-assentor requirement in section 46(4A).