On the night of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement referendum, Northern Ireland’s chief electoral officer, Pat Bradley, was approached by Ian Paisley, who was convinced the government would interfere with unopened ballot boxes. The leader of the Democratic Unionist party requested that party officials keep watch over them.
Bradley, who has died aged 90, refused but permitted one DUP official to remain – though the individual did not stay the full night. Bradley himself remained awake for more than 40 hours, determined that the election should be free and fair. “I did not want any hints or innuendo that the boxes had been tampered with,” he later explained.
The common assumption was that the vote in favour of the agreement needed to be over 70% to demonstrate cross-community endorsement of the peace process. Bradley was filmed by the world’s media announcing the result: “Yes – 71.12% …” before being drowned out by euphoric cheers.
It was the apogee of his career, a moment played repeatedly in news clips and dramas – most memorably in the emotional finale of the Channel 4 comedy from his home city, Derry Girls.
Bradley’s contribution to electoral reform was far-reaching. In a jurisdiction where the maxim “Vote early, vote often” was a celebration of illegal ballot-stealing or personation, he successfully lobbied in the mid-1980s for voter ID to prevent widespread fraud. It has since been adopted by the rest of the UK.
He also argued for the D’Hondt proportional representation system for elections to the Northern Ireland assembly, rather than the single transferable vote, hoping that smaller parties would be able to win seats – engaging them in political progress. It is currently used only to allocate ministerial posts.
Scrupulously fair, humorous, fiercely intelligent and highly organised, Bradley was trusted by politicians across the spectrum of Northern Ireland’s deeply divided parties – even though he regularly had disagreements with them.
Bradley was born in Derry on a “mixed” street, where he made Catholic and Protestant friends. His father, John, had volunteered with the Royal Engineers, was injured on the Somme and worked for the Post Office; his mother, Margaret (nee Keating), moved from her family’s farm in County Tipperary to work in a Derry department store.
The youngest of four surviving children, Bradley attended St Columb’s college, a Catholic grammar school, where contemporaries included two Nobel prize winners: the SDLP leader John Hume and the poet Seamus Heaney.
After studying science, Bradley worked as a lab technician at DuPont, the chemical company, before joining the government’s Local Enterprise Development Unit. He met his wife, Mary Lowe, at a dance hall over the border in Donegal. She worked for the county council. They married in 1965.
Anticipating job losses at LEDU, Bradley applied to be deputy electoral officer. He had no experience and was given little training. Almost immediately, in February 1974, Ted Heath called a snap election. Bradley discovered the ballot boxes and polling booths stored in a rusting Nissen hut 40 miles away. He drove them back to Derry.
As an election official, he became a target. An anonymous phone caller warned he should not organise the vote. Replying that he would run it “without fear or favour”, Bradley hung up. Shortly afterwards, a 200lb bomb was found – and defused – in an adjoining building beside the wall where his desk was located.
On the day of the election, a polling station in Creggan, a republican stronghold, was attacked by petrol bombs. Police advised him to shut it down. Petrified staff were evacuated. Bradley opposed closure because it might invalidate the election. He persuaded the army to reverse an armoured Land Rover under a hail of missiles into the school porch, enabling Bradley and another volunteer to enter and keep the station open.
On the same day, in a predominantly loyalist area, a massive union flag was draped over a polling station entrance, intimidating nuns who wanted to vote. Bradley persuaded the ringleaders that a TV crew was about to arrive and it would look embarrassing if the flag was displayed muddied on the ground. It disappeared, allowing the nuns to go in.
In 1980, he was promoted to chief electoral officer for Northern Ireland – a position he held for 20 years, during which he presided over 25 elections. An early battle involved legal action against Margaret Thatcher after she announced – without consultation – that only the names of parties and candidates could appear on ballot papers. The DUP wanted to add Ian Paisley’s name, associating their candidates with his popularity. Bradley checked the legislation and found no such power existed. The prime minister was forced to back down.
Even before he retired, Bradley’s expertise was in demand overseas. He helped coordinate elections in newly emerging democracies and war-damaged states including Bulgaria, Kosovo, Bosnia, Russia, Lebanon, South Africa, Saudi Arabia and Hong Kong.
He organised ballots for the UN, EU and the UK Foreign Office, met Nelson Mandela, was shot at during polling in East Timor and completed a master’s degree in conflict resolution at Ulster University.
Bradley himself never voted. He was not interested in politics in his early years when Derry’s electoral system was discredited; in later life he never entered a polling booth – even after retirement – to ensure no one questioned his independence.
He was made MBE in 1986 and CBE in 1999 for services to the electoral process. In 2022, he published his memoir Ballots, Bombs and Bullets; his first choice for the title was Polls Apart. Away from elections, he enjoyed hillwalking, crosswords and reading history.
Bradley is survived by Mary and their three children, Aileen, Dermot and Steve.
• Patrick Alphonsus Bradley, election officer, born 30 August 1935; died 18 September 2025
• This article was amended on 10 October 2025. Assembly elections do not use the D’Hondt proportional voting system, but the single transferable vote. D’Hondt is used to allocate the number of government ministers each party gets after Assembly elections.
