The Supreme Court today declared that convicted prisoners cannot vote while serving their jail terms.
The ruling overturned a High Court judgment last year that Steven Rossi Walsh, in jail for 15 years for arson, had a right to vote in elections and that the state was obliged to let him do so.
Today's decision followed an appeal by government lawyers. In the face of the earlier High Court directive that Walsh was being deprived of his constitutional right to equality before the law, the Supreme Court judges, found there was no obligation on the state to provide prisoners with the machinery to vote.
They said the right to vote went into suspension while prison sentences were being served.
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