Tag Archives: General Election

 

Taoiseach Enda Kenny channeling his inner Bertie last night in County Mayo.

Whinger boo! hiss.

Enda Kenny on Broadsheet.ie

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Former Justice minister and Tánaiste, Michael McDowell (above)

Sticking his oar in or trolling the electorate?

Michael McDowell S.C., and blogger (for Paddy Power) writes:

If Labour are at 8% and Sinn Féin are at 15% on first preferences, the Left and protest vote may coalesce around Sinn Fein and other Left candidates in terms of second and later preferences.

There may, on current trends, be few transfers in practice from FG candidates (either by way of surpluses or eliminations). That might yield “Workers Party”-type electoral outcomes for Labour.

Will the Government’s latest “Scare the S**t Out of the Voters” strategy (I only use the language of an anonymous Government spokesman) work?

Does anyone really believe that a FG-FF coalition would be “riskier” or “worse” for the economy in terms of employment, interest rates. investor confidence or sustaining the “recovery” than a minority FG-Labour coalition with independent support?

Some might well say that they are reluctant to leave Sinn Féin as the largest opposition party.

On the other hand, leaving FF and SF together for a short period as the alternative Government to a shaky FG-Labour minority mish-mash might be just as scary in the long term.

Unless things suddenly change in the polls, we are in for a change of some sort in Government.

Enda will still be Taoiseach when the Dáil reconvenes. But I doubt whether he will scare the voters into handing him and Labour another chance.

Fight!

Michael McDowell: Does anyone really believe that a Fine Gael/Fianna Fail coalition would be riskier or worse than a minority FG/Labour partnership (Paddy Power Blog)

 

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Storyful’s Irish Election Open Database.

The results of a NINE-hour ‘codeathon’ with journalism students from Dublin City University (DCU).

Donie writes:

Storyful has built an Irish Election Open Database to help citizens, news organisations, universities and others easily access and analyse information about candidates running in the 2016 general election…

Irish Election Database (Storyful)

wikiTj Mcintyre

Should politicians be able to invoke copyright in order to conceal their past promises? Asks copyright lawyer and digital rights expert TJ McIntyre (above), who adds on his blog:

Irish politicians are getting nervous. Although the government still insists it will serve out its full term, insiders are muttering about the possibility of a post-budget snap election.

It’s no coincidence, therefore, that they are now looking to clean up their online presence and two stories from this week are particularly telling.

First Alan Kinsella, of the invaluable Irish Election Literature website, tweeted (above):

Second, an anonymous user from an Oireachtas IP address attempted a systematic (but ultimately unsuccessful) whitewashing of the Wikipedia entry for Senator Jim Walsh, deleting all reference to various gaffes by him through the years.

There’s nothing new about attempts to suppress unfavourable information about Irish politicians – and the current stories are nowhere near the seriousness of the recent incident in which the aide to Derek Keating TD dumped several thousand copies of a local freesheet containing a critical story about his boss.

But these examples still raise interesting issues for lawyers. In the case of the Irish Election Literature website – should politicians be able to invoke what would presumably be a copyright argument in order to conceal their past promises?

In the case of Wikipedia, should edits made by TDs, Senators or their staff about themselves be disclosed? Wikipedia certainly thinks so.

More generally, how should Irish law deal with sites such as Politwoops which archive deleted tweets from politicians? Is Twitter correct in saying that politicians should be able to delete their ill thought out tweets without that fact being highlighted – or should we accept that what politicians say is inherently newsworthy?

The Irish courts have yet to confront most of these issues – but it will be interesting to see what happens in an ongoing case brought by a Dublin election candidate who has invoked the “right to be forgotten” against online discussion of his election literature. Hopefully this will result in a judicial statement affirming the strong public interest in political discussion.’

EDIT FIGHT!

Whitewashing Your Internet Profile (TJ McIntyre)

Thanks Nelly Bergman

Meanwhile….

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This afternoon

Austrian law student Max Schrems outside the Four Courts.

Leah writes:

The High Court has quashed a decision by the Data Protection Commissioner to refuse to investigate a data privacy complaint by Max Schrems against Facebook. Max is an Austrian privacy activist who campaigns against Facebook for privacy violation, including its violations of European privacy laws and alleged transfer of personal data to the US National Security Agency (NSA) as part of the NSA’s PRISM programme…

(Leah Farrell/RollingNews.ie)

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Head of Digital at the creative agency Atomic Hugh Curran

With the younger vote anyway.

As the election date brouhaha continues unabated…

Head of Digital at the creative agency Atomic in Dublin, Hugh Curran writes:

One of the great things about digital is that you can see pretty quickly what is working and what is not working. If you measure everything, you can see what is working and adjust your model and spend accordingly. Measuring effectiveness means you can tell when the best time to send and email is or when the best time to post a video to Facebook is or what piece of content is a good performer and resonates with your audience.”

“The political party that gets digital right in this campaign will, I believe, see a larger percentage of younger people voting for them. By giving people the opportunity to see a message in the space where they spend most of their time, political parties will improve the opportunity to convert these people into votes.”

Yikes.

*Deletes Facebook account*

Get ready for the digital campaign (Hugh Curran)