I had reason to be up early this morning to bring my wife to the airport, and on the way home decided to see if there was anything interesting happening at the count centre for the Dublin local and European elections in the RDS. It turned out that there was – a recount between two candidates who were fighting for the last seat in Cabra, with as little as 2 votes between them.
I suppose this was my second weekend in a row playing the role of “press photographer” and although I had no pass to get access to the count centre, a quick glance at my bulky camera bag was enough to convince the security guard to let me in all the same – so at least I obviously looked the part!
I was there at 9am and initially there was very little happening, though I did get some documentary shots as people got set up for the day of counting that lay ahead. As I walked around the centre I stumbled across some activity in an annexe and noticed Maurice Ahern, who yesterday lost the battle to win the Dublin Central by-election, eagerly watching a local election count, in which he was fighting for the final seat. After last night’s count he was separated by somewhere between 2 and 5 votes (depending on who I asked) from the sitting Sinn Fein councillor Séamus McGrattan. The surplus was in Ahern’s favour, but little enough to justify a recount. I watched (and photographed) for about 10 minutes, and in this time two spoiled votes were found amongst the previously counted votes, reducing Ahern’s surplus, so at the time of writing, that particular count is right down to the wire. It proves that literally every single vote counts in these elections.
After I got my shot of Maurice watching as votes were rechecked (he’s the guy on the far left – I got a laugh from him wearing a Dublin jersey under his suit jacket!), I moved out to the main area where there was, by then, a little more activity. That allowed me to get some more shots and to marvel at how smoothly the whole operation was running – but that’s for another day.
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