Ireland: Day 4

It's unbelieveable that it's already been four days that I've been in Ireland. Today is June 4th and the European Union Election day. There is a little media coverage, but not much for this election. Typically, the European Union election has the lowest turnout out of the three main types of elections (EU, national and local elections).

Jim McLaughlin, Bobby Hamill and I caught the 10:10 AM bus into Downpatrick to meet with Colin McGrath from the SDLP. Bobby and I walked to Eddie McGrady's office in Downpatrick. Mr. McGrady is a member of parliament in Westminster and serves the Southern Down district to the British government. We met up with Colin McGrath, the chairman of the Down District Council, and he took us to the polling stations where we were going to help the SDLP with their elections.

When we first showed up to the polling station we saw these campers outside with political propoganda all over them. Apparently it is a custom to park a small camper outside the polling station in order to be able to campaign right outside the building. Also, Bobby did some "canvassing" (campaigning) during his time working for the SDLP. You can see that they had campers for both the SDLP as well as Sinn Fein.


The election process for many years experienced a lot of unethical, unjust and inappropriate operations. Staff members at polling stations would stuff the ballot boxes with false ballots. Individuals would vote multiple times with many different names. Anyways, the reason that we were there was to check off people that voted and to ensure that people did not vote twice. This practice has died down tremendously now, especially with European Union elections.

Contrary to America politics, Northern Ireland experiences low turnouts in it's European Union elections but the highest turnouts in it's local elections. American general presidential elections typically draw many more people than local political elections. It would be interesting to see what this is attributed to. I imagine that it's the local community pride that is experienced here than can be a testament to the high local turnout rate. Something to look into in the future. A gentleman at the polling station said that a typical local election draws 70% - 75% of the electorate. That's impressive!

The gentleman I was sitting next to, a member of Sein Finn, was telling me a story about a guy he knew that would steal people's names and vote 7 or 8 times every election. One time the guy spent all day voting at random voting booths and then finally came back to his home district to vote. Turned out, someone else had stolen his vote right from underneath him! I guess it serves him right but it still makes you think about how archaeic the process has been very recently.

Talking to the man from Sinn Fein, I was able to hear a lot about the Unionists and Nationalists in the country as well as the perspective of "The Troubles" from a member of Sein Finn. "The Troubles" is what the local people call the conflicts between the Unionists and Nationlists throughout the late 1900's. Many people, including myself, falsely attributed the conflict solely to religious battles. "The Troubles" have mainly to do with those that want Northern Ireland to stay part of Great Britain and those that want it to be joined into a united Republic with Ireland. The picture to the right is a picture of the city of Clough, a strongly protestant and unionist city just south of Downpatrick. As you can see, some members of the city have gone into a construction area and spraypainted "NO SURRENDER" on the walls of a stone fence. This isn't past history, it's very recent and at times very surreal.

As I was working in the voting booths, a Police officer from the Northern Ireland Police Service came in asking for the person in charge of the polling station. A man that was a staff member went out with him and then grabbed another staff member with him on the way out. They were gone for about 10 minutes and then came back. The man in charge said that there was a bomb threat at another polling station and the police officer need to document the entrances and exits to the building (a Catholic grammar school). Afterwards, I moved to another polling place where I talked to some individuals about the bomb threat. They had told me that in the day, members of different politically parties (esepcially Sinn Fein) would leave bomb threats at polling stations that they knew there was a heavy concentration of opposing candidates (i.e. the Sinn Fein would threaten a booth that would turnout a high concentration of UUP members). He said, at times the threats stopped working so then a group would actually go through with a bombing. This was a part of "The Troubles" that is so frustrating to the Irish people.

After working at the polling stations, Bobby and I met back up with Jim and Meghan. Jim and Meghan are working for the Down Recorder and we had a chance to actually see their office and workspace. We then went to a small deli, grabbed a sandwich and headed home with all the schoolchildren that rode the bus to Dundrum and Newcastle.

Lastly, on our walk back to the main city we saw one of the hospitals in Northern Ireland for the Southern Down district. Northern Ireland is part of the British national healthcare system, but from those I've talked to it seems that they get a lot less medical attention here then they do in England. Below is an example of the hospital we saw and you can see that hospitals in America wouldn't become in this bad of shape. This hospital is an active hospital and we saw someone going into it as we were walking by.



Obviously, healthcare in America is very expensive and our system may not work as well as it could. To the contrary, the people in Northern Ireland realize that the American healthcare standards are much higher than that of Northern Ireland. Something does need to be done, but we certainly do not want to lose what we have now. Apparently Michael Moore didn't have the chance to visit this hospital when he made Sicko.

Today certainly has been a long day. Tomorrow I will be heading back to Ms. Margaret Ritchie's office downtown to work again. She is an extremely pleasant and wonderful woman. I've really appreciate the time I've had to work with her.


The people that we run into have genuine conversations with you and trully wonder how you are enjoying their country. Their prideful of their home country and want you to see the beauty of it.

Til then...cheers,

- Kyle

While I was writing this one of the girls, Allie, came into our apartment and said that there was a guy playing golf in the middle of the bay. Sure enough, where the tide had gone out there was a gentleman doing some driving range practice. Check it out!