WHILST I firstly commend both people who stood in the Tavistock Town Council election, and congratulate the ultimate winner, I am concerned that democracy wasn’t allowed to run its full course by the council taking the decision not to issue polling cards.

I did contact the council prior to the election to find out why cards were not being issued, even though those who were registered for proxies and postal votes were contacted directly by West Devon Borough Council (WDBC).

I was informed that it was too expensive to go to the trouble of retaining WDBC to print them and post them out. Well the results certainly showed that this approach seriously curtailed the democratic process in our town with only 497 papers being counted, a turnout of just under 13%, from a constituency numbering almost 4000 electors!

I would have thought the bigger expense was the wages for two shifts of poll clerks at two polling stations and the counting of the votes and not the cost of the poll cards.

We live in a democracy and whilst every citizen has a moral duty, not a legal responsibility as in other countries, to vote in any election, the authorities also have a responsibility to ensure that the citizen is aware of the process that is taking place.

I just hope that in future there is a more responsible attitude by Tavistock Town Council to demonstrate the view that as we live in a democracy, it is worth a great deal compared to citizens in others certain countries who can only dream of such freedoms and therefore to support the exercising of democracy in all future elections.  Our forebears fought for such rights and to see it treated as only a profit and loss figure on the council budgets goes against what I believe most people passionately believe in.

Iain Andrews

Tavistock