Sir, - The order for the holding of the referendums on June 7th was made on May 8th. When I realised that I would be unavoidably out of the country on polling day, I decided to arrange for a postal vote. When I enquired how to do this, I was informed by the franchise section of the Department of the Environment that, unless I belonged to a specific category of person (e.g. a garda, a student away at college, a pilot, a disabled person), I was ineligible to exercise my vote by post.
I then phoned my local authority franchise office to arrange for a postal vote for a relative who is housebound, only to be told it was too late: there is a requirement to apply one month in advance. Yet the order for the holding of the referendums was made only on May 8th - too late to allow even people in the special categories to apply for a postal vote. In response to my further incredulous enquiry I was informed that this was the usual timing: it has been the practice in recent years that the interval between the order and the referendum is one month.
In a society where a significant number of people are necessarily on the move, a system should be devised to encourage, rather than prevent, the exercise of the vote. I believe that the postal vote should be available as an option to every voter who could not otherwise vote; and that the mechanism to arrange the postal vote should facilitate the arrangement and allow adequate notice for it to be made. - Yours, etc.,
Maire F. Mulcahy, Wilton Avenue, Cork.