On a wet Saturday morning, the Supreme Court sent the Government out smiling and the rest of us to the timetables. By four votes to one in O’Dowd v. Commission for Elections, Chief Justice Muiris Mac an Bhaird blessed the Postal Ballots Regulation Act, 1949: a witness before a notary; a narrowed list of who may apply; a receipt clock brought forward by a clean, hard 72 hours. In three weeks we are meant to decide whether to bind our customs to Albion’s. The Court would have us first tie the hands of those who vote from sea and exile.

We shall not pretend surprise. The last decade has been a study in accretion. In 1940 a seal was added to ward off phantoms; in 1943 the clerks began peering at people’s signatures with a jeweller’s loupe; in 1946 the categories were written narrow enough to trip a ferryman; then the 1948 window on the Liverpool corridor was clipped. Now the Supreme Court, faithful to its habit of deference in administrative matters, calls this convenience. Justice Síle Ní Fhlannagáin, alone, remembered that our absent franchise is a promise made in 1898 to the islands and to the labouring poor who keep our tables fed on Albion wages.

The Minister for the Interior, Máirtín Seoighe, speaks darkly of forged witnesses in two parishes, yet after a fortnight of scare talk he has lodged no charges. We have seen no figures by parish, no names, no sworn informations. Uncharged allegations cannot justify cutting lawful ballots off the count. If there is evidence, let the Ministry name the parishes, the dates, and the charges, and let the Commission publish nightly tables of rejected applications and envelopes by parish with the stated reason.

Go to the Castlebar General Post Office after dusk and you will see the management of things: a sorting room on a go‑slow since the overtime freeze; canvas sacks for Aran and Liverpool held ten minutes past the book so a supervisor can initial a form; a clerk with ink on his cuffs prising open a crate for the SS Gráinne, which twice limped in September and dragged with it a two‑day tail of uncarried envelopes. The Act’s cut catches precisely these margins. The islanders, who relied on a Saturday sailing and a Monday sorting, will now be punished for a squall.

Magistrate McTigue is no partisan and has no need to be. The bottleneck is at licensed notaries, who are thin on the islands; her court will see the spillover in disputes over signatures and attestations. On Inishturk there is none; on Aran there are too few; on Achill in October the sea is a clerk of its own stubborn practice. A man who has drawn fish all week may be told to go into Westport from Achill by road for a seal, or across to Cleggan from Inishbofin, or into Galway from Aran, with the last sailing on his back like an hourglass. He will be told that the Court says this is tidy.

Town trades will take the custom that new hurdles bring, and island voters will bear the cost. Our readers know the islands’ habit: a kitchen table, an envelope, a packet hand‑stamped at the post, the name of a son in Barrow or a daughter in Liverpool carried across on the CPT route preserved since the Emergency. Those votes move on CPT sailings and through the Castlebar sorting room on set nights. To make those votes hostage to an urban seal and a narrowed category is a policy, not a neutral repair.

We do not ask the Court to rewrite itself. We ask the Commission for Elections to use the discretion it still plainly holds. By close of business tomorrow, it should instruct CPT to add a Sunday sailing on island routes where weather permits, keep island dispatch counters open until seven‑thirty in the evening, and mark island sacks for priority handling at the Castlebar sorting room. It should also publish each night the number of rejected applications and envelopes by parish with the stated reason. Any change to receipt times must come by authority: the Dáil can debate and authorise a narrow sea‑route grace to first light on the Monday of the count, and the President should withhold any countersignature on fresh absent‑vote regulations until that debate is held.

We ask also of President Pádraig Ó Conraoi what the Codex and custom allow: an open undertaking not to countersign any fresh regulation on absent voting before a Dáil debate. That specific act—publicly withholding a countersignature pending debate—sits within his office and would steady the law in a fortnight of strain. The Rural Compact will say we are picking a quarrel with the Constitution. We are challenging the Cabinet’s habit of tightening the rules without figures or hearing, and the Commission’s refusal to publish the rejections that would test its claims.

As to the Premier, Aodhán FitzGerald, and his Minister Seoighe: if they are so sure of the public’s affection for a customs union with Albion, they have no business prefacing the vote with a winnowing of the electorate. Let them have the courage of an honest roll. If, instead, they prefer to govern by filing cabinet and stock phrases about counterfeit witnesses that never become indictments, it will be remembered in island kitchens when prices are set at the frontier posts.

Captain Hanly’s left knee clicked as he took the step outside our office. He is angrier about the CPT’s neglect than the notaries, and who can blame him; a franchise that runs on diesel should at least be granted decent fuel. In September the SS Gráinne twice lost power off Achill Head and spent long hours under repair while sacks for Achill, Clare Island, and Inishturk stacked up on the Castlebar floor. A vote in such a country is a sack on a pier at dawn.

Between now and 22 October watch three things: the sea measures we urge (either they will be ordered, or the lateness of the island sacks will tell on the Commission); the parish tables of rejection (either they will be posted night by night, or the Minister’s charges will stand naked of figures); the President’s hand (either he withholds any countersignature until the Dáil debates an emergency grace, or he lets it pass without hearing). As we went to press on Wednesday evening, no parish totals had yet appeared on the Commission’s Castle Street notice board.