Wexford voters turn their back on politics over polling station row – ‘you may as well be sending them to Mars as Ballindaggin’

By Simon Bourke, Wexford People

Dwindling voter numbers are set to decrease yet further in Co Wexford in the coming years with constituents turning their back on new polling districts. The creation of the new Wicklow-Wexford constituency for last year’s general election led to more than a thousand people being forced to travel over 5km to cast their vote and, according to one local councillor, an increased level of disenchantment.

At the July meeting of the Enniscorthy Municipal District (EMD) county secretary Michael Drea presented a draft of the new Co Wexford polling scheme, a scheme which was in operation for the general election in November 2024.

He explained how those living in the Rossard Electoral Division were not only moved into the new Wicklow-Wexford constituency but that they also had to vote in Ballindaggin, approximately 5.6km from their previous polling booth in Kiltealy Hall.

Cathaoirleach of the EMD, Councillor Barbara Anne Murphy, said these two decisions had deterred many from casting their votes in the generals last year.

“Although there’s space in Kiltealy Hall the people of Rossard were moved to vote elsewhere,” she said. “There’s another hall in Kiltealy you could use and then you would not be disenfranchising people, it’s upsetting enough to be moved from one constituency to another but then to move their polling station too, it really, really annoys them. As a result many people now refuse to vote.

“It’s really sad. We, as politicians, are in contact with the local community all the time, and if they don’t vote we don’t get elected. We are removing the right to vote from people who can’t access the polling venue. We’re making it more difficult for people to vote when we should be doing the opposite.”

Cllr Jackser Owens was similarly critical of the changes and said those behind it had no concept of the impact they’d made on small, rural communities.

“This was brought in by an independent group, there are people who have lived and voted in Wexford all their lives being asked to change their polling station,” he said. “I spoke to people last year and they didn’t know who their candidates were. Someone asked me, ‘why am I voting for someone in Wicklow? I don’t even live in the county’.

“Then when they went to vote in their usual place they were told ‘you can’t vote here’.”

And while Mr Drea said the new polling scheme would go out to public consultation in the future, Cllr Owens said this was “a PR exercise” and that no matter what he, or his colleagues, said, “nothing was going to change”.

Cllr Pat Kehoe meanwhile, said the creation of a new constituency had altered what, for many, were the habits of a lifetime.

“There’s people who have voted for 60 years in the hall in Kiltealy, it was bad enough they couldn’t vote for the people they knew, but then they were asked to go to a different polling station too,” he said. “For a lot of people polling day is a tradition, they’re meeting their neighbours and friends, you may as well be sending them to Mars as Ballindaggin. It’s bad enough they’ve lost their constituency, now they have to vote elsewhere too.”

Defending the scheme, Mr Drea said the mathematical equations involved meant “discommoding” a small number of people across the county

“There are no more than 650 voters for each polling booth. We averaged it out across the county and where there was a requirement to add an additional polling booth to keep the figure under 650 that’s what we did,” he said. “There were around 1125 people (in the county) moved from where they previously voted to a new polling station - I’m excluding Kilmuckridge because they were literally moved 150m up the road.

“The county registrars don’t want to discommode people, they just felt there was huge potential for errors on polling day if you had people voting in different constituencies in the same building.”

Determined to express the sense of disappointment being felt by those in the Kiltealy area, Cllr Murphy said that ultimately these changes would lead to a lower turnout for future elections.

“Once upon a time there were 85 per cent of the people voting, I know you work hard to maintain an accurate as possible electoral register but our voting numbers are falling and this will only make it worse.”

Remaining on the topic of voting and polling stations, Cllr Murphy said the decision to change the station in Bunclody last year had caused further disruption for some voters.

“The polling station was moved from St Aidan’s Hall because it didn’t have wheelchair access,” she said. “It was moved to Our Lady of Lourdes Primary School, but that’s on a hill. It is wheelchair accessible but it’s not accessible for anyone who doesn’t have transport and has to walk there, a number of people with heart conditions and difficulty walking were unable to vote there because of its location. There’s more than one type of accessibility issue.”