Registering to vote

The Register of Electors is managed and maintained by a Registration Authority within a City or County Council.

To find out if your name is on the Electoral Register you can:

• check online at www.checktheregister.ie
• enquire at your local authority office

If you live in a hospital, nursing home, mental health facility or similar institution and are unable go to your polling station, you may apply to join the special voters list. This enables you to vote where you live.

Certain people are entitled to request a postal vote:

• members of the Garda Síochána (police force),
• persons living at home who are unable to go to a polling station to vote because of an illness or disability,
• persons whose occupations are likely to prevent them from voting at their local polling station on election day, including full-time students registered at home who are living elsewhere while attending an educational institution in the State (under this arrangement, a ballot paper is posted to the home of the elector, who must arrange to have his or her declaration of identity witnessed by a Garda before marking the ballot paper and returning it by post to the returning officer),
• electors unable to vote at their polling station due to circumstances of their detention in prison, pursuant to an order of the court,
• certain election staff employed at a polling station outside the constituency where they live, and
• persons who consider their safety, or the safety of a member of their household, would be at risk if their name and address were to be published, may apply to be an anonymous elector. Such electors may only vote by post.

Further information is available on the register of electors in a range of different languages.