"This is crazy, what's it all about?" Thus wrote one Cork voter on the referendum ballot paper. Another voter inscribed the ballot paper with the words: "I don't understand - not enough coverage". Other inscriptions included "Insufficient information available" and "What is it?"
Other papers, too, revealed that the electorate was suffering from an information deficit on the referendum: "Not given specific details"; "Not told enough"; "Not explained enough"; "Spoiled vote - ridiculous amount of information"; "I don't approve of secrecy"; and "I don't know. What is it about?"
It was clear, according to the returning officers in the five Cork constituencies, that many voters were so ill-informed about what the referendum meant that they simply marked the white paper in the presidential election and popped the green one for the referendum into the ballot box without marking anything on it. On some papers there were question marks, on others there were drawings. A few had obscenities written on them.
In the two Cork city constituencies, Cork North Central and Cork South Central, there were 3,489 spoiled votes - a fair indication of how confused people were. The Cork Fine Gael TD, Mr Bernard Allen, was heard on radio at the weekend telling it as he saw it - the lack of information was not all the fault of the politicians; the media would have to take responsibility, too.
However, that was not quite how the Cork County Returning Officer, Mr Michael O'Driscoll, saw it. In the Cork North West constituency, the spoiled votes were running at 12 per cent, while in Cork South West the percentage was 10 - similar to the level in Cork East.
The returning officer said that throughout his long career, which spanned three decades of presiding over count centres, he had never experienced so many spoiled votes. The politicians, he said, had failed to explain to the electorate what the implications of the referendum were.