This week I have been on The Irish Times website again, this time with an article on emigrant voting.
You may or may not know that Ireland, unlike most European countries, does not allow emigrants to vote by postal vote. Emigrants are kept on the electoral register for, I believe, 18 months after leaving Ireland and may vote in elections in that period if they return to the country to do so.
With the rise in emigration, particularly among young Irish people, since the end of the boom as well as the presidential election, general elections and the same-sex marriage referendum, there has been a lot of discussion in recent years on the subject of further extending the vote to emigrants.
I, as am emigrant, obviously have some thoughts on the issue and The Irish Times was kind enough to publish them this week.
At the time of writing this post there were 96 comments on the article. My views are, apparently, not shared by many. But I’m happy to see such a discussion going on. I’ve even made it to 4th place on the “Most Discussed” articles on Thursday.
