Dublin City Libraries have completed the digitisation of another two years of the Dublin City Electoral Lists, so there are now three years of entries – for 1908, 1909 and 1910, a total of 160,000 records – available for free searching on dublinheritage.ie.
The lists hold the names of Dublin's residents and those who owned property in the city and who were registered to vote in the local and the parliamentary elections. There were some additional qualification criteria which narrowed down the numbers eligible to vote somewhat. Only around one-sixth of the city's population were registered.
The lists were introduced after the Local Government (Ireland) Act 1898 gave the vote (in local elections only) to all adult men and women over the age of 30; this was the first step towards universal adult franchise, which was achieved in 1921. You can find out more about the electoral lists here.
The Dublin City Electoral Lists Project aims to digitise all of the Dublin City Council Electoral Lists from 1898 to 1916. It forms part of the City Council's programme for the Decade of Commemorations.
The original lists are held by Dublin City Library & Archive at 138-144 Pearse Street, Dublin 2.