Vote early (in your life) and vote often

I went for years without voting, I am embarrassed to say.

But I blame the people who create the register. (With a pinch of laziness, immaturity and apathy from me).

I was registered in my home town of New Ross from the age of 18 at my family home. At some stage while I was living in Dublin 1 between 1997 and 1999 during the week while at college, somebody who was not me added me to the register (I found this out years later). It wasn’t me. And then I was removed from the register in Wexford.

I never got round to looking into it, but the first I knew was when no voting card arrived at home and I wanted to vote. I blame youth and fecking off travelling to Australia and complete ignorance for not doing anything about it. I didn’t know where my vote was you see, so when you have no information, where do you even start?

So it is safe to say I didn’t cast one vote for most of my 20s. I didn’t know where my vote had gone to be honest – until a friend of a friend who was still living in the Dublin 1 abode mentioned that voting cards arrived at the apartment for me.

Somewhere along the way, most likely when I hit 30, I changed the address and started voting. It just would be so much easier if I had a say in where I want to cast my vote and not have my address changed without my knowledge or consent.

I moved house a year ago and forgot to change my voting address which is why I had to go onto checktheregister.ie to double check which polling station to go to. (There are two in town).

Changing isn’t easy – there’s a nasty ol’ form. It’d be great if this could be digitised. But for now this will have to do: http://www.checktheregister.ie/appforms/RFA1_English_Form.pdf