Mouse in the ballot box
Early on Saturday morning, Mayo county returning officer John Condron issued a word of caution to count staff at TF Royal Hotel and Theatre.
A mouse had reportedly made its way into one of the Mayo ballot boxes late on Friday night, and the status of said mouse was unknown.
Counting in the Mayo local elections continued right through the night, but the stowaway mouse was, on Sunday evening, yet to be found.
Diamonds
A staple of election time is the reporting of miscellaneous items found in ballot boxes – miraculous medals, mice, the likes.
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But in Salthill on Saturday, count staff were seen searching a ballot box from the Gort-Kinvara LEA in an attempt to recover a diamond that had fallen in among the votes.
The diamond, believed to have fallen from a voter’s ring while casting her ballot, was still missing at the time of going to print.
An expensive vote indeed.
Patrick Feeney takes the wooden spoon
Galway City Council candidate Patrick Feeney made history during 2019′s local elections – for unwelcomed reasons – by garnering a singular vote.
Mr Feeney didn’t let his poor return in 2019 put him off. He gave it another whirl for these elections, and was rewarded with a double-digits tally in the Galway City Central LEA.
His 13 votes still left him with the wooden spoon, sadly.
Marian Agrios, who asked electorate not to vote for her, receives first preference votes
Late last month, former Fine Gael local election candidate in Marian Agrios pulled out of the race for a seat on Louth County Council when it was reported she had received large sums of money to remove an objection to a housing development near her home.
A Fine Gael spokesperson said Ms Agrios’s “behaviour” fell short of “the standards expected of any Fine Gael candidate”.
The debacle prompted Ms Agrios to ask prospective voters not to give her their vote, given it was too late to formally remove her from the ballot paper in the Drogheda Rural LEA.
Not everyone got the message: she received 105 first-preference votes.
Toilet roll ballot paper
The length of the Midlands-North-West ballot paper was the subject of much disquiet over the weekend, with Mayo TD Michael Ring likened the 27-candidate, 73cm-long ballot paper to a roll of toilet paper: “A disgrace!”
By Sunday evening, reporters in Castlebar, becoming delirious in the wait for results of the constituency’s first count, wondered aloud how many Midlands-North-West ballots you’d need to reach the moon.
Family affair
Nessa Cosgrove’s success for Labour in Sligo comes a day after her brother Shane O’Callaghan topped the poll for Fine Gael in Cork South Central.
“We get on really well,” she said. “It is lovely to have someone to talk about politics with. Most people don’t want to talk about politics.”
Elsewhere, Fine Gael’s Britto Pereppadan (24) was elected on the ninth count for Tallaght Central. His father, Baby Pereppadan, was elected for Tallaght South earlier on Sunday on the sixth count.
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