The electoral system was the servant of democracy, not its master. So said Mr. Justice Herbert of the High Court in Dublin, who found in a recent case that the requirement for candidates to pay a £300 deposit in Dáil elections and £1,000 in elections for the European Parliament was unjust and unfair in the manner in which such deposits discriminated between citizens.

This is a further step in the democratization of the electoral process in Ireland, one that should be noted in the context of Canadian laws and regulations which still require that candidates seeking election to Parliament must first put up a $1,000 deposit.

Another discriminatory provision in Canada bars persons of limited means from membership in the Senate.

"Unjust, unfair and unconstitutional", were terms used by Mr. Justice Hebert in his ruling, which legal representatives for the Government indicated would not be appealed to the Supreme Court.

The judge said there was no evidence to support the State's argument that, were it not for the requirement to pay deposits, the electoral system would be overrun by spurious candidates and democracy would be undermined.

He also found there was no evidence to support the claim that individual voters would be confused or confounded by any increase in the number of candidates. The Oireachtas (Parliament) was required to regulate elections and to accommodate any supposed increase in the number of candidates and not to seek to restrict the numbers, he added.

The case arose when Mr. Thomas Redmond, a retiree, submitted nomination papers in the 1992 general election and for the 1994 European Parliament elections, but his name was omitted from the ballot papers after he refused to pay the deposits. He said he was unemployed at the time of both polls and could not pay the deposits without suffering undue hardship.

Canadian legislators may wish to extend their electoral system in similar democratic fashion.