The most common conspiracy about migrants voting in Ireland suggests that by allowing foreign nationals to vote, politicians are circumventing the democratic process - and defying the will of Irish citizens - in a quid pro quo deal.

It suggests that politicians are attempting to get themselves re-elected by enfranchising migrants and asylum seekers in order to ‘buy’ votes from communities whom they allowed to live in Ireland.

One offshoot of this theory suggests that foreign nationals can arrive in Ireland ahead of an election and claim to be an asylum seeker, then vote for a preferred Government candidate and leave the country. 

Another suggests that the publication of guides to voting in languages other than English are a self-serving power-grab aimed at encouraging migrants to vote for Government parties.

There are other, broader falsehoods that feed into anti-migrant conspiracies like the Great Replacement Theory, which posit that the level of foreign nationals living in Ireland is now significant enough to change the outcome of elections held here. 

Claims have also been made that argue that allowing non-citizens to vote is “fundamentally undemocratic” or a “ploy” by the government to retain power.

In Ireland, several anti-migrant narratives have circulated on the back of a record number of refugees and asylum seekers entering the country from 2022 onwards, largely (though not exclusively) as a result of the war in Ukraine.

Migrants and asylum seekers began to be shoehorned into conspiracy theories in an effort to baselessly explain that outsiders are to blame for certain societal ills like the housing crisis and that the native Irish population is being replaced with asylum seekers from developing countries as part of a globalist plan.

Misinformation about foreign nationals being able to vote is somewhat specific to the Irish electoral system - like those which make arguments about the printing of non-English election literature - but there is an international dimension to such claims.

The conspiracies often rely on misinformation about elections from other countries, which claim that elections are illegitimate, like Donald Trump’s claims about the 2020 US presidential election.

After that election, outgoing president Donald Trump sought to undermine his rival Joe Biden’s victory by suggesting that the election result was fraudulent because there were larger-than-usual numbers of postal ballots - a phenomenon that was partly spurred by the Covid pandemic.

In the aftermath of the election, one claim that circulated among Trump supporters was that Biden’s Democratic Party encouraged immigration, particularly from Latin America, because members believed that immigrants were more likely to vote for a Democrat. 

Those claims were often adjoined to other false claims about election fraud, which suggested that people who are not entitled to vote could do so, or that there were ‘missing’ ballots in favour of Trump that would have overturned the election.

After a record influx of asylum seekers and refugees into Ireland in 2022, and ahead of the local and European elections in 2024, similar claims began to emerge here.

Often, such theories were interlinked with anti-immigrant misinformation.

One of the central anti-immigrant conspiracies to emerge in Ireland was the “Great Replacement Theory”, a ethno-nationalist conspiracy that native (white) people of Europe are being replaced by non-white immigrants, often Arab or Muslim people, as part of a strategy orchestrated by a group of clandestine, powerful elites.

This eventually morphed into the above-mentioned conspiracies about elections, with claims that the Government was seeking to continue ‘anti-Irish’ policies by enabling foreign nationals to vote for them.

Irish citizens are allowed to vote in local, general and European elections, but things are more complicated for those who are not citizens.

Regardless of the election, all eligible voters must be on the electoral register in order to cast a vote, and must be over 18 years old and reside in Ireland.

General elections are held every five years at most in Ireland (though they are held more often than that if the Government of the day falls or if it calls an early election).

Only Irish citizens and British citizens who live in Ireland can vote in General Elections. The same rules apply for byelections, which occur when a TD resigns from the Dáil, or if they die or otherwise have to be replaced (for example if they become a Member of European Parliament).

The Ninth Amendment to the Constitution allows non-Irish citizens to vote in General Elections, but only British citizens are granted this by law because the United Kingdom has a similar law for Irish citizens.

Similar arrangements exist in various countries around the world, for example: Portuguese people living in Brazil may vote in Brazilian elections and vice-versa, and many Commonwealth countries allow resident citizens from other Commonwealth countries to vote in national elections. 

Other countries, such as Chile, Malawi, and  New Zealand take these laws even further and permit anyone who is resident to vote in national elections (though some require that people have been living in the country for a set period of time).

However, this is not the case for general elections in Ireland.

Separately, there are different rules for local elections which allow people to vote for city and county councillors on local authorities. These elections are also held every five years.

Councillors create policies for local authorities, which are in charge of services such as roads, planning, housing, parks, community development, environment, and things like libraries and fire services.

Local elections are enshrined in the Irish Constitution, following the Twentieth Amendment, which was approved by referendum in 1999 and which says that foreign nationals can vote.

Asylum seekers have been eligible to vote in local elections since 2004, when Temporary Registration Certificates were explicitly allowed as identity documents for voting.

Other foreign nationals resident in the State have been to vote in local elections since before that change.

Ireland’s situation is not unusual. Many other countries also allow non-citizens to vote in local elections, including many in the European Union, such as Belgium, Estonia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Slovakia and Slovenia.

Other countries do so on the basis of bi-lateral arrangements with other nations, as is the case between Ireland and the UK.

Local elections can’t determine who gets to stay or get into national government, meaning that non-citizen votes cannot keep or remove a sitting government from power (despite what conspiracy theories may suggest).

European elections are also held every five years, usually at the same time as local elections. These see Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) decided upon, where representatives are voted to become politicians in the main law-making body of the European Union.

The parliament elects the President of the European Commission, the EU’s main executive body which manages EU policy, and appoints Commissioners, as well as setting the EU’s budget. 

The European Parliament is in many ways the EU’s counterpart to the Dáil, whereas the Commission could be compared to a national government involving different ministers. 

Like many EU laws, individual countries are given leeway in how they manage European elections.

For example, some countries don’t divide their territory into constituencies or allow people younger than 18 to vote, or use a “list” system rather than a single transferable vote (the latter system being favoured in Ireland).

However, all EU countries must allow resident EU citizens to vote and stand for election (though some countries require that voters must reside in the area for a minimum period).

To vote in European elections in Ireland, voters must be an EU citizen, over 18, and listed on the Register of Electors, which requires that a person is “ordinarily resident” in the Republic of Ireland. 

Similarly, Irish people living in other EU countries may be entitled to vote there; however, an individual cannot vote in European elections in more than one country (e.g. by voting in person where they live as well as sending a postal vote to their second ‘home’ country). 

The principles guiding these election procedures have been in place since the founding treaties of the European Union; however, these were further enshrined as a right of EU citizens in the Lisbon Treaty, whose force in Irish law was approved by referendum in 2009.