One of the key faecets of a functioning democracy is the ability to make an informed decision when voting. The European and local elections are both happening this Friday in Ireland. There are abundant resources available to find out about European election candidates - a relatively small pool of folks running, combined with very large electoral areas made this an easy problem to solve. Local elections, however, are a maze to navigate. Even finding a list of candidates running is not something centrally orchestrated by any election commission - never mind finding out more about a candidate.
I tried to use ChatGPT to analyse the policies and platform of local election candidates. Furstratingly, none of the independant candidates had a very large web presence, and even those who were members of one of the major parties had very sparse information available about their upcoming campaign platform. Most candidates had some form of social media presence - but it was of little to no use in discerning policies - mostly photos of babies and puppies on the doorsteps.
What follows is the table, with as much information as I could compile about the local election candidates in the district of Dungarvan. One unusual column is “stance on abortion” - this was the only issue for which I could find consistent research online across all candidates. A longer list of key points does not indicate a preference for that candidate - and merely indicates he/she had a more established web presence.
You can view the table on Google Docs.