How & why did you vote in the Lisbon Treaty ?

[mr_anderson]

Apologies if someone has already had a thread on this (so many I cant keep up).
But, in a short space, can you say how you voted and why.

From my own perspective I am exceptionally pro-european, but voted NO.
Nothing to do with Libertas or any other group (please note that Sinn Fein !).

The simple fact that Ireland was the only country to have a vote on such an important issue prompted me to vote no.
It was as obvious as hell that so many countries were denied the right to vote because their governments knew full well what the result would be.
I felt Democracy was being shoved aside, and had my own personal revolution against it.

I cannot explain how difficult it was for me to vote in such a way.
I understand the direction the Lisbon Treaty was trying to push the EU.
Undoubtedly, it would have made us all more powerful on so many levels.
And in the general scheme of things, I agree with it.

But, the politicians need to chill.
They need to take stock.
They need to digest the recent enlargement of the EU (new members and increase in population and migration).
They need to take things slower.

The politicians may be ready to push things forward, but the EU population is not.

What prompted me to write this was reading all the letters and articles in newspapers.
From the Irish Times to the Daily Telegraph it tries to box me into a catagory for voting no.
But they are all wrong.

What made this referendum different for me was it alienated pro-europeans.
Im interested in hearing other opinions on this subject.

[Helium Three]

That expresses the feelings of many.

But you are right in another way too - there are mucho threads on this already

[FutureTaoiseach]

I voted NO because while normally a yes voter, I feel that European integration has reached its acceptable limits, and because I regarded Lisbon as a threat to our corporate-tax revenues, our right to EU referenda, the primacy of our Supreme Court on human rights issues, and to Ireland's voice in the EU institutions i.e. the Commission and the Council of Ministers. It was also a protest vote over the govts open-door approach to the Irish labour market - in particular the elite's support for Turkish EU membership. I also regarded Lisbon as a threat to democracy because the French and Dutch people said no.

[digoutday]

i voted no because i tried to read the treaty and it made no sense to me.

[blodger]

Apologies if someone has already had a thread on this (so many I cant keep up).
But, in a short space, can you say how you voted and why.

From my own perspective I am exceptionally pro-european, but voted NO.
Nothing to do with Libertas or any other group (please note that Sinn Fein !).

The simple fact that Ireland was the only country to have a vote on such an important issue prompted me to vote no.
It was as obvious as hell that so many countries were denied the right to vote because their governments knew full well what the result would be.
I felt Democracy was being shoved aside, and had my own personal revolution against it.

I cannot explain how difficult it was for me to vote in such a way.
I understand the direction the Lisbon Treaty was trying to push the EU.
Undoubtedly, it would have made us all more powerful on so many levels.
And in the general scheme of things, I agree with it.

But, the politicians need to chill.
They need to take stock.
They need to digest the recent enlargement of the EU (new members and increase in population and migration).
They need to take things slower.

The politicians may be ready to push things forward, but the EU population is not.

What prompted me to write this was reading all the letters and articles in newspapers.
From the Irish Times to the Daily Telegraph it tries to box me into a catagory for voting no.
But they are all wrong.

What made this referendum different for me was it alienated pro-europeans.
Im interested in hearing other opinions on this subject.

It seems a bit silly to vote NO because other countries did not hold a referendum. That's their business.
There cannot be a referendum on every single issue that affects a country.
We only had a referendum because there were conflicts with our constitution. This was not an issue for other countries.
The Lisbon treaty was compatible with the constitutions of other countries.
Is this not true or am I talking horse crap/

[thebigv]

I voted no essentially because I believe in intergovernmental cooperation but not in integration and because there is a huge disconnect between the european power elites and the people.The original post expresses this well.

[CookieMonster]

I voted yes because I was drunk when I reached the polling station.

[Helium Three]

In its rather pathetic effort to tell us why we voted No the Commission and the Taoiseach's Office (!) commissioned a telepoll. It fed some titbits on this to the media last night, which led to the stupifying line in the Indo lead story this morning that we all mistakenly thought the treaty could be easily renegotiated. Now there is this from Jamie Smyth in the Times breaking news site:

A telephone poll commissioned by the European Commission in conjunction with the Taoiseach’s office also found that 80 per cent of No voters support Irish membership of the EU. Three quarters of No voters also believe that rejecting the treaty would have no impact on the Irish economy.

A majority of Yes voters, some 55 per cent, thought that rejecting the Lisbon treaty would hurt the Irish economy while 67 per cent of yes voters believed that a no vote would weaken Ireland’s influence within the EU, according to the preliminary findings of the poll of 2000 voters taken at the weekend.

When asked to give a single reason for voting No, some 40 per cent of people replied that they didn’t understand the treaty. A fifth of respondents said they voted No to protect Irish identity while 17 per cent of respondents said they didn’t trust politicians or Government policies.

Other reasons cited for voting No where to protect Irish neutrality (10 per cent), to keep an Irish EU Commissioner (10 per cent) and to protect the tax system (8 per cent).

Yes you are right - there is something funny about the numbers on the single reason question. They add up to 105 per cent.

[TradCat]

I first decided to vote No because other countries did hold referendums. France and Holland rejected the same deal so it was reintroduced with a new name in an unreadable form. And the British were promised a referendum and were then denied it.

[Helium Three]

Just spotted this beauty in the Times version of the telepoll story -

Young people between the age of 15 and 29 voted against the treaty by a factor of two to one, a finding that is labelled as “very serious” in an explanation of the result prepared for European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso.

Very very serious if people of 15, 16 and 17 had a hand in this great national mistake.