Madam, – For 20 years I have exercised my right to vote without exception. On Friday, however, I was informed by Limerick County Council that my franchise has been “deleted”. Without having conducted a very thorough investigation, the County Council decided that I no longer resided at my place of residence and pressed delete on my constitutional rights. Apparently the burden has now been put on the citizen to continually prove his or her constitutional right to vote. If I lived in an ostensibly less democratic state I would say that I have been “silenced”.
In Ireland, however, one is not silenced, instead one is “deleted” – a much more clinical description of political disenfranchisement. What saddens me is that, despite having been so actively exercised, my vote has merely succeeded in empowering somebody with the capacity to make me vanish. – Yours, etc,