The High Court found that the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government had not given sufficient or reasonable recognition to the duty to make arrangements for visually impaired voters to mark ballot papers without assistance where reasonably practicable.
In a judgment delivered on 30 March 2017, Mr Justice O’Connor said the Minister had statutory power to make such arrangements and that the Constitution required a secret ballot. He said the court could guide the Minister on those duties, but could not require the use of tactile voting devices or any particular arrangement.
The case was brought by Robert Sinnott, who told the court that his sight had deteriorated and that, in several elections and referendums, he had to rely on polling clerks to read or mark his choices. He said this risked disclosing his vote and left him uncertain whether his preferences had been recorded correctly. He was unable to vote in referendums in 2013 because he considered access to his polling station difficult and unsafe.
The judgment recounts that the Electoral Act 1992 empowered the Minister to provide arrangements for visually impaired voters to mark ballots without assistance. The Minister made regulations in October 2016 providing a ballot paper template for referendums. The court noted that the regulations came after earlier delays and that departmental priorities had pushed research and planning on accessible voting down the list.
Evidence included trials of voting methods organised by the National Disability Authority and testimony about tactile templates used in elections in the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland. The judge said the court could not decide which method should be offered to the plaintiff, and accepted that further research and development might be needed. He also said there was no indication from the Minister, before or after the 2016 regulations, of plans to introduce arrangements for other elections.
The plaintiff sought declarations concerning the Minister’s duties. The judgment proposed that the Minister should publicly outline planned studies and regulations, and provide arrangements where there were no disclosed reasons based on practicality, cost or effectiveness against doing so. However, the first proposed declaration was not included in the order ultimately made.
The court said it would make an order along the lines of its proposed declarations, subject to hearing from counsel. A note to the judgment records that the declaration about publicly outlining planned studies and regulations was omitted from the order made on 28 April 2017, as perfected on 12 May 2017, at the parties’ request. The judgment did not award damages, saying the plaintiff’s principal grievance had been addressed. It did not decide whether he had a constitutional right to vote independently and in secret under Article 40.3.1.