Voting on the weekend should always be the case. The low turn out was probably due to the low level of debate and interaction with the public on the referendum itself. I’d imagine the Supreme Court judgement probably didn’t help for those who were undecided either and so they decided to stay away.

Saturday voting is ideal for students who live out and people who live way for work!

Yes great idea the main reason for low turnout in my opinion is lack of a no campaign and also the referendum was not affecting people jobs or money. I think turnout would have been lower if it was mid week. If we want more people voting we need to make it easier like online etc. No need for visiting polling station.

Weekend voting = win. This referendum was a bad experiment for it though, there was very little enthusiasm from either the yes or no sides and (from where I’m sitting) a yes or a no would have resulted in very little change.

People away during the week (students/work/etc) are unfairly discriminated against for mid-week voting and, unless we change the rules surrounding postal votes that will make them easily accessible, we should try this again for a proper vote (e.g. the European/Local elections next year).

I’m against voting on Mondays so I’ll sit this one out

Doesn’t matter what day voting is on, there will always be someone saying it doesn’t suit. Christ it takes two minutes to do and you have 14 hrs within which to do it. Cop on, like.

There should be the opportunity to cast a vote for your electorate from a different electorate. That, or postal voting, would stop so many people being disenfranchised through not being able to travel to the electorate where they are registered.

They need to introduce some sort of list system, then technically you could vote from any polling station methinks. Students could vote from Dublin or whatever etc. and it would get rid of the James Reilly esque pandering to local constituents that adversely affects the rest of the country.

Monday, wed, Fri or saturdays -the result this time would have been the same.

In General and in terms of a greater turn out -Saturday would be better

Yes.
It stops the already short Irish school year becoming shorter. Literacy and numeracy standards are already poor – students do not need more time off.

There’s rarely a good excuse not to vote if you actually want to, polling stations are open from 9am – 10pm, plenty of time to get your sh1t together.

I couldn’t convince some friends to vote as they head of on Saturdays on family business!

By itself, no. Working week voting suits my house better as we can vote on the way to work. As it happened, we were away this weekend and didn’t vote.

If we had Friday and Saturday voting that would make most sense from a ‘get as many people to vote as possible’ point of view. Obviously it would be more expensive but worth it, imo.

How about we just vote online? I can transfer thousands of euro in safety online. I don’t see why the same security systems couldn’t be employed in voting.

I think it should be two days of voting.

low turn out prob due to teachers not voting in protest at missing out on “another” day off !!!

I know people who voted in this Referendum who never voted in one before, and on the flipside others who didn’t vote who never missed a vote before. You can’t please all of the people all of the time. I think the low turnout was to do with many reasons, but the most common and most pathetic was the dislike and mistrust of this government, that is no reason to miss such an important vote.

I don’t think anything can be learned by this one referendum. There are many reason probably why people didn’t vote and I doubt the day of the week was a significant factor in this one.

I can see argument boths ways on this. I know when I was working 9-5 I found a weekday vote handy because I could do it before I went to work or on my way home. And yet those who don’t work or are away from home such as students can be disenfranchised by a weekday. Saturday voting goes give people more flexibility and allows people to return home but potentially anybody who decides to go away for a weekend will end up losing their vote.

To be honest I think the problem here is not the day of the week but the fact that we are still so backward in the way our voting system is setup. Sadly because of the previous electronic voting debacle it will be a brave Government who would move forward on this issue. Realistically there should be a method whereby a central database of the voting register exists and people could either vote online or could go to any polling station and still have their vote registered in their own constituency. The easier you make it for people to vote, the more likely they are to do it.

There is zero chance of FFG/Labour/FF allowing the youth or the people forced to emigrate this country, a vote.
Any polls when analyzed show a much higher proportion of both populations giving first preference votes to anyone other than these 3 parties.
Allowing either groups of disenfranchised people a vote, would be like a turkey voting for x-mas. These cynical self-serving, fat-pensioned traitors will never allow any group of people to vote that could threaten their pay-checks or pensions. Getting state-funded pensions while you are still at working age is a sham, getting the pensions these guys are getting is pure robbery.

Voting should be done over two days, for two reasons.

1. People will be less likely to miss voting due to the multitude of reasons that they do.

2. People will be able to react if overnight exit polls indicate a result they won’t like.

Anyway, just an idea.

I think it’s imperative on all citizens of this country to get out and vote. How are we supposed to achieve a bailout for the working man if we don’t???

It would be interesting to see if running your poll on a Saturday — as well as today — would give a significant difference — either more people voting — or a measurably different result — at least you’d have a quantified set of results .

need to move with the times and have online voting.

Did not think it was a big issue to warrent a referendum nothing to do with Sat. Far more serious issues need to be addressed by d clowns !!_

Why weren’t the polling stations open at the usual hour of 7am?

I think that having the polling stations open on a Saturday was a brilliant idea. Kids still got a full week of schooling. What is shocking is the low voter turn-out (probably due to voter fatigue/apathy than anything else) for a change to the Constitution. I think for Constitutional Referenda, people who can vote but don’t should be fined. It should be an offence not to use your vote.

I’m a school teacher and I think having the referendum on a Saturday was a bad idea.