People in Africa sometimes walk for days to cast their vote (From Messenger Newspapers)

People in Africa sometimes walk for days to cast their vote

10:35am Monday 14th May 2012 in Your Letters

YET more elections and yet more hard earned council taxpayers money squandered on ‘postal votes’.

People in Africa and other Third World countries sometimes walk for days to cast their vote or queue for hours on end to do so.

I demand to know from our political elite just how much this costs us.

From printing forests of paperwork, stamps, envelopes etc, add the cost of officials, paid for by you and I, locally this must come to a small fortune, nationally the cost to taxpayers makes me shudder. If fit and able voters cannot be bothered to get off their backsides to go cast their vote in person then they simply don’t deserve our paying for their idleness.

Many years ago those who could prove they were working away from home, in hospital, the armed forces or too ill to vote were allowed a proxy vote, meaning a designated person did so on their behalf.

In these ‘austere times’ is it too much to expect a return to this system?

Steve Baker, address supplied