A campaign encouraging people to spoil their vote in the upcoming Presidential Election has been launched in Dublin city centre.
Among the members of the "Spoil the Vote" campaign is businessman Declan Ganley, who said he would be writing "1 Maria Steen" on his ballot paper next Friday.
An Irish Times Ipsos B&A poll released yesterday indicated that 6% intend to spoil their vote on polling day next Friday.
In the two previous presidential elections, between 1% and 1.25% of votes were spoiled. In 2018, that amounted to 14,700 votes.
Last month, Ms Steen, a barrister, failed to secure enough support to get on the ballot, securing 18 Oireachtas nominations when 20 were required.
Businessman Gareth Sheridan also missed out a nomination as he secured the backing of just two local authorities, two short of the four needed.
This left three candidates on the ballot: Independent Catherine Connolly, Fine Gael's Heather Humphreys and former Fianna Fáil candidate Jim Gavin, who subsequently dropped out of the race.
Mr Ganley said he and a cohort of the Irish electorate were therefore not represented on the ballot paper.
He said he believed a "rigging of the ballot was taking place" and that he would be writing "1 Maria Steen" on his own paper.
"If Connolly or Humphreys, if they do not represent you or motivate you to want to vote for them....there's another option.
"There's an option to register a protest vote, to register your dissatisfaction with what we see as the rigging of the ballot that has taken place and that is to cast a spoilt vote," he said.
Asked what reforms he wanted to see to the presidential nomination process, Mr Ganley suggested two changes that could be made.
"One straightforward reform would be to allow 10,000 or 20,000 signatures from voters that are willing to sign and nominate you - pick a number and then let somebody get popularly nominated to get on the ballot paper.
"The other is the county council route, that is constitutionally provided for, cannot have the shutters pulled down on it in the way we've seen it this year. It's really important that doesn't happen again," he said.
