Ryan Casey has encouraged voters to write the name of their preferred candidate on the ballot paper at polling stations later this month.
Ryan Casey, who was in a relationship with the young teacher before her murder shocked the nation in January 2022, took to social media to encourage voters to spoil their vote on election day later this month.
From left: Catherine Connolly, Jim Gavin and Heather Humphreys before their first live presidential debate. Photo: Niall Carson
“As a young Irish citizen and taxpayer, tonight was utterly embarrassing and infuriating to watch,” he began, sharing a still image from the presidential debate which aired on Virgin Media One on Monday night.
It was the first televised debate between the three hopefuls, independent candidate Catherine Connolly, Fine Gael’s Heather Humphreys and Fianna Fail’s Jim Gavin.
Branding them as “incompetent, unrelatable, shallow, puppet candidates”, he said “highly popular presidential candidates like Nick Delehanty and Maria Steen” were “undemocratically blocked” from the ballot.
Ashling Murphy and Ryan Casey
He said they would have ripped the candidates “to shreds with their common sense, wit, intelligence, relatability and willingness to bring to light in the correct manner what challenges we are truly facing as a country and what we can do about it.”
He continued: “I wholeheartedly urge everyone who still believes in true democracy, true freedom and the right to have your voices heard to turn up to your local polling stations in huge numbers on October 24th and spoil your vote as a protest to government for undemocratically blocking candidates that they feared would win.
“The brave men and women who fought and gave their lives for us to have the right to vote for who we want to lead our country are turning in their graves right now looking at what our current government have done to our Presidential election!”
Casey posed a series of questions and asked: “Are you happy with the overall current direction our country is heading? If not, we have to start somewhere.”
He instructed his social media followers to write the name of who they really wanted to vote for on the ballot, before asking for the post to be shared to “start the conversation.”
Ashling Murphy and Ryan Casey
News in 90 Seconds – October 1st
There have been calls on X, formerly Twitter, for members of the public who are unhappy with the candidates to spoil their vote.
Last week, callers to RTE’s Liveline also shared their intent to do so.
RTE One are set to televise a second televised debate on October 5th.
The presidential election is set to be held on October 24th, with the final day for voters to register is October 7th.