Elementary abelian regular coverings of Platonic maps, Case I: ordinary representations

We classify the orientably regular maps which are elementary abelian regular branched coverings of Platonic maps M, in the case where the covering group and the rotation group G of M have coprime orders. The method involves studying the representations of G on certain homology groups of the sphere, punctured at the branch-points. We give a complete classification for branching over faces (or, dually, vertices) of M, and outline how the method extends to other branching patterns.