Zoomie mentioned e-voting recently, and reading it reminded me of a post I had intended to write.
In case you haven’t figured this out yet, let me tell you that I’m a democracy nerd. I looked forward to getting the opportunity to vote so much that when I finally turned 18 I found out how to have myself added to the supplementary register so that I could vote in an upcoming referendum. I couldn’t have done what I did to stop e-voting here if I didn’t care as much as I do. Which is why C and I sat in front of the TV from 9am till 11:30pm on Friday watching the election coverage. We found it *exciting*.
Late into the evening John Bowman had Joe McCarthy on to talk (briefly) about e-voting. He introduced Joe by saying that he had “perhaps single-handedly” stopped the introduction of e-voting in Ireland. Before I go on to gripe, let me make two things clear. First, I don’t begrudge Joe the attention. Joe did amazing, wonderful, and important work in the fight against e-voting in Ireland. Not only that, but he’s much better at being interviewed than I am. He enjoys it, he gets the point across, and he’s fun to listen to. Second, I don’t have any interest in being on TV. I’m not in the least bit sorry that I was sitting comfortably on a couch on Friday evening rather than sitting across from John Bowman on live TV. I’m *glad* that I haven’t been on radio more than twice in the last two years.
Here’s my complaint: I’m fairly convinced that the reason I wasn’t asked to speak to John Bowman, and the reason he is able to think of Joe as fighting alone, is that I’m a girl. It’s not as if John Bowman’s never heard of me. I’ve discussed e-voting with him *in person*. He had me on the panel of Questions and Answers for goodness sake. But I’d be willing to bet I didn’t feature in his “from the archives” on e-voting on Sunday morning (I didn’t hear it all). And it’s not just John Bowman. When RTE’s Scannal did a review of the history of e-voting in Ireland they didn’t use footage from my appearances on either Questions and Answers or Primetime (neither I nor ICTE featured in the program at all, that I recall). Mind you, I don’t in the least blame Joe McCarthy; he’s probably said *my* name more times on radio than he has Martin Cullen’s. He didn’t mention me on Friday, but he didn’t have time.
Maybe I sound bitter, but it gets my goat. I can’t think of any reason why I’d be ignored this way other than my gender, and it makes me angry.
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