I had hoped, on Report Stage, to have proposed an amendment dealing with postal voting, but that amendment was not acceptable. In fact, it was pointed out to me that it was so drastic that it, probably, could not have been accepted on any other Stage and that I should have had to try to have the Bill negatived on the Second Reading, which I had no wish to do. I do not think that the amendment was so drastic as was pointed out because my suggestion would have been that postal voting should be used only on those occasions when a vote was not taken at a general election and, if subsequent Governments adopted the view expressed by the Minister on Second Reading, that, inevitably, amendments of the Constitution must be a matter for Party politics, the probability is that the occasions on which postal voting would be used would be very few and far between.
I did not care to propose the amendment without consulting my colleagues and other Senators. I live in a very isolated district and travel daily becomes more precarious and, in the late winter, is more of an alarm than an excursion. So I lost whatever chance I had. It was suggested to me, quite unofficially, that the probability was that the Department would regard the whole scheme as entirely impracticable. I do not think that a people who have mastered the mathematical mysteries of proportional representation would have any greater difficulty in marking their card in the bosom of their family than in a polling booth. Notwithstanding precedents, I do not think that anyone would have the temerity to suggest that the Department would fail to devise an excellent scheme. Therefore, "totally impracticable" has a more sinister meaning, presumably. I do think that, unless the question of prestige or patronage or personality of the candidate was involved, there would be little likelihood of corruption. As we advance in government, the tendency is to become more conservative, but I think it would be a pity if we adopted as our slogan the good, old conservative motto: "Never do anything for the first time."
It would have been a good thing if, in this House, which has so often been accused of being reactionary, we could have discussed, on this Bill, a matter which, if not new, would have been a novelty in this country. If we had adopted postal voting, even to a limited degree, and had got over our troubles, we would not now, possibly, have so many vacancies in the Dáil and we would not be living in dread of a general election. It seems to me that the time to make experiments and try expedients is a time of emergency. We see the Dáil disintegrating, more or less, from week to week, without any effort being made to cope with that situation, and I really think the Government ought to consider whether it would not be feasible to fill vacancies in the Dáil by postal voting and take a chance on the question of trying to use corruption in elections. I do not believe that anything of that kind would take place. At any rate, it would take place only to a very limited degree.