Strange Anomaly #64

Voting here is unlike anything I have seen before. It does work great for a small country. A person lives within a certain constituency. When it comes time to vote, there is a percentage of the people within the constituency that a candidate would have to get in votes in order to win. A voter goes in and marks the candidates with a number 1, number 2 and so on, for what ranking they want to give each candidate. If there is not a clear winner they keep ruling out the lowest ranking candidate and somehow take the second choice numbers from each individual voter and start adding that so that they kept removing the lowest until their is a clear winner. Confused? I am, but I know I did not explain it the best, but really, it makes sense if you get a good Irish person to explain it.

So at the end of the long weekend there was a new Dáil (house of representatives if you like) and a new Taoiseach (prime minister would be the best example in English) for a complete change in party from the long standing Fianna Fáil to Fine Gael. I asked if there were any left wing type parties (since there are like 6 or maybe 7) and they are not any. Sinn Féin may have been radical during their day (they were the birth of the IRA a long long time ago) but they are pretty right wing now. But when it comes to ‘voting’ in the new Taoiseach, it is not like the states where you vote on the person, instead, when you voted in your candidate for your constituency, it takes into account their party, and whatever party holds the majority in the Dáil, their party leader becomes the country’s new leader. So you vote for the group, not the person. And contrary to what the New York times stated, our new Taoiseach is not a Ms. Edna Kenny it is a Mr. Enda Kenny, who, by the way, looks like the dad from Alias, Victor Garber. RTE did make that mistake, so I am not alone in thinking that.