Large numbers of Northern Ireland people living abroad have been inquiring about postal votes in tomorrow's referendum on the Belfast Agreement.
The chief electoral officer, Mr Pat Bradley, said his office had been swamped with hundreds of queries from Northern Ireland people all over the world seeking postal votes. He had to tell them that only people resident in Northern Ireland could vote.
"We have never experienced an election like this before. We have been inundated with inquiries. There are very many unhappy people in San Francisco, Cape Town and South America who were born in Belfast 10, 15 or 20 years ago. They feel very disappointed that they can't vote," said Mr Bradley.
In Northern Ireland there are normally high turn-outs west of the Bann, where parliamentary elections are fiercely contested between nationalists and unionists. In the east, where in most places unionists have comfortable majorities, the turn-outs tend to be much lower.
This time, however, Mr Bradley suggested, the degree of interest indicated the poll could be high throughout Northern Ireland, east and west. A further illustration of this was the number of applications for postal and proxy votes. Responding to claims by the former Ulster Unionist Party leader, Lord Molyneaux, who is anti-agreement, that identification documents were being forged to swell the Sinn Fein Yes vote in west Belfast, Mr Bradley said efforts would be made to detect forgeries.
He observed, however, that it was Lord Molyneaux who called for his resignation when, with the assent of the British government, Mr Bradley introduced a system where voters had to present identification cards at polling stations.
Mr Bradley said that with his co-operation the British parliament was trying to prevent or reduce electoral fraud in Northern Ireland. Medical cards, passports and driving licences were among the documents necessary to establish proof of identity. The most easily forged of these were medical cards, and so long as medical cards could be produced as proof of identity there could be electoral abuse. A total of 1,175,741 people are entitled to vote in the referendum in Northern Ireland. Polling is from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. at 1,228 polling stations. All the votes will be counted at the King's Hall in Belfast on Saturday.
Late on Friday night at various regional centres in the North the votes cast will be counted, but they will be counted face down and political observers will be unable to produce a tally of what might be the final vote. They will then be brought to the King's Hall. As there will be a central count it will not be possible to determine how each of the North's 18 parliamentary constituencies voted. About 200 staff recruited by the electoral office will begin counting at 9 a.m. The people should know whether the agreement has been accepted or rejected in the North by mid- to late afternoon on Saturday.
