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VOTERS WITH DISABILITIES were prevented from freely accessing some count centres during yesterday’s elections.
For some centres it was requested that those with accessibility issues wishing to take part should call ahead to ensure that they were facilitated.
In one case this resulted in the joint-Vice President of Paralympics Ireland Eimear Breathnach being prevented from freely casting her vote.
Breathnach won a number of major titles for table tennis during her career as a paralympic athlete, competing in the Beijing and London Paralympic games.
Upon arriving at her polling station yesterday, she was was initially unable to enter as she had not called ahead to request wheelchair access.
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So under the constitution all citizens are equal I am not allowed vote as I did not ring ahead to organise wheelchair access #GE16 disgusted
Speaking to TheJournal.ie John Dolan, the campaign director for the Disability Federation of Ireland (DFI), said that the condition about calling ahead to vote means that disabled people are unable to “vote freely like everyone else”.
“On one hand it is good that accommodations are made,” he said.
But we should have gone beyond the point of someone having to say ‘I’ll be showing up at a polling station and will you facilitate me’.
Speaking about wider election issues – specifically the fact that provisions are not made to ensure that the votes of blind people remain anonymous – Dolan said that the Irish voting system had some distance to travel.
“I think what it shows is that even in relation to something that is sacrosanct in a republic, like being able to operate your voting preferences,” he said.
We still can’t ensure that happens for people with disabilities.
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………. what is the betting that not one of them will have a legitimate mandate. We live in a post-democratic age, it is disturbing to see how many accepted this.
We have the man who fudged Greece’s books, so they could get in to the Euro, while he was the head of their banking system made leader. It is like having Sean Fitzpatrick rammed in as leader of this state by Europe.
It will either go down in history as the start of a dark but temporary blot on European democratic history or else as a great day for Europe, written by our new technocratic masters in the future, the corporatization of the continent. There used to be a name for the merging of corporate power and State control in to one entity. A predecessor of this man invented it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnTOiso08HM
Good link Tim,thanks for sharing it.
The mention of the ‘intense talks’ by Monti begs the question as the what bribes were offered, by bribes I mean offers of position and power.
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