Sir, – Brendan Perry (May 26th) raises an interesting point. He argues that the presence of a Bible on a table within the polling station constitutes a (completely inert) interference in the rights of voters to make up their mind without "undue influence" as they decide how to cast their vote.
In the primary school in which I cast my vote I'm practically positive I saw representations of several figures from the popular children's educational programme Sesame Street. In light of the fact that a very recent court seems, at least implicitly, to have accepted the fact that two of that show's most famous characters are gay icons, do we not here have a case of similar, subtle, last-minute urging? Was I not subject to comparable undue influence?
I could very easily come to that conclusion and take offence; certainly if I was looking around for something to be offended by – a briquette to lob onto my always smouldering fire of indignation.
Two solutions immediately present themselves. First, voters like Mr Perry and myself who are hypersensitive to attempts to unduly influence us should be blindfolded at the door of the polling stations and then helped to the booth to vote before being blindfolded and escorted back to the threshold.
The second solution is to hold all similar votes with religious and societal-sexual dimensions in the middle of a field where nothing that can be deemed partial or unacceptably partisan can be viewed. The Curragh or the Phoenix Park would be very suitable but the danger lies in the sudden appearance of an unduly influential rainbow that would render the whole process invalid and might necessitate moving to exclusively night-time voting in the open air with all the health and safety considerations that entails.
The only other solution is that we all “get over ourselves” a little and stop indulging in hair-trigger indignation. – Yours, etc,
CATHAL MacCARTHY,
Limerick.
Sir, – Kevin Butler asks me (May 25th) for "a more scientific explanation" of why Bibles are placed in polling stations than my statement (May 23rd) that 90 per cent of the Irish population are Christians.
I would have thought that my reasoning as I stated it was plain but here is a slightly more wordy version. People who go to the polling station to vote but have no documents of identification with them and who are not known to the polling station officials may be asked to swear an oath affirming their identity. The probability that such a voter is a Christian is 90 per cent and Christians normally swear an oath on the Bible. – Yours, etc,
WILLIAM REVILLE,
Cork.