[30.04.2007 first posted on silicon republic]
The election race is on, and RTÉ has decided to cover all bases with the launch of a website, www.rte.ie/election, which it said will have “in-depth profiles and analysis on every candidate, constituency, party and the major election issues”.

With such intensive multimedia coverage of the lead-up to Thursday 24 May, RTÉ hopes to compliment its television and radio coverage with this specialist website, as of yet not live. Voters may have great online coverage of the campaign but they are speaking out against the Taoiseach Bertie Ahern’s decision, which he made yesterday, not to support a weekend polling day. The Taoiseach announced that the Thursday vote would go ahead. This choice of day limits students and commuters, who only have until tomorrow to get in applications to their local council in order to qualify for a postal vote. Spokesperson for Irishelection.com (www.irishelection.com), Cian O’Flaherty, said: “The Taoiseach is patently hoping commuters will stay at home. I can see no other reason why he completely ignored their concerns and went ahead with a Thursday vote.
“The fact that as many as 300,000 commuters and 70,000 students will struggle to vote in this election is a damnation of the Taoiseach’s decision to choose a Thursday.” Irishelection.com has been campaigning for a weekend vote since March of last year, and has received support from members of Labour, the Green Party and Sinn Féin. The days when a Thursday vote brought people out are gone. Traffic, hectic lifestyles and demanding jobs are making it all but impossible for modern workers to vote during the week.
“It makes a mockery of the idea of active citizenship and amounts to little more than temporal gerrymandering,” said O’Flaherty. By Marie Boran