An interesting thought on the Midlands North West ballot paper

One of the more eye-catching aspects of this election cycle has been the utterly ginormous ballot paper in the Midlands North West constituency.

Voters in this constituency were faced with 27 candidates on a ballot paper measuring 73cm in length.

The question is this – if you took every single one of the valid ballots and laid them down flat, one-by-one, could it cover from one end of the constituency to the other?

Let’s start at the tiptop of the constituency with Ireland’s most northern point – Malin Head in Donegal. Then we go down through the constituency and land in the far right corner of Laois, to a place called Rossmore.

We could save time and go a straight line through Northern Ireland but we’d be leaving the constituency if we did that. So let’s take a detour through Sligo.

The total journey is 414 kilometres. Now let’s do the maths.

The valid poll was 679,946 voters. If you laid each 73cm ballot out, that’s a total of 49,636,038cm. Converting that to kilometres, that is just over 496km of ballot.

The distance would be covered surely, and with 82km to spare. That’s enough leeway to pay a visit to beautiful Ballina in north Mayo.