Should Irish Emigrants have Votes? External Voting in Ireland

Abstract

Ireland is one of the few countries in Europe not to offer some form of suffrage to its citizens who live abroad permanently. By contrast, it has been a front-runner in the trend towards providing more liberal voting regimes for resident non-citizens, as since 1963 it has allowed all residents for the previous 6 months to vote and stand in local elections. This paper considers the normative case for and against external voting, the current comparative context of its increasing provision among European countries and the range of ways in which voting rights abroad combine with the extensibility of citizenship by descent abroad. Addressing the Irish case, it argues that there is no basis for a general right to vote for external citizens, but that, none the less, persisting connections and the rate of return migration give some reason to grant votes to first-generation emigrants, if differently weighted from those of resident citizens.