Today’s voting day here in the Republic. The rest of Europe will be watching this Lisbon Treaty referendum very closely. Here was my report from last month’s Torch, along with my opinion and a much more thorough take-down of Lisbon here by Paul Belien. Belien makes several terrific points about the EU’s tendency to hassle voters or completely bypass them when it can’t get what it wants.

In June 2001, the Irish rejected the EU’s Treaty of Nice and subsequently had to vote again in 2002, when they approved it. Other notorious European nay-sayers are the Danes. In the 1990s, Denmark also had to vote again, after its people rejected the Treaty of Maastricht. In 1992 they got it wrong according to the EU, in 1993 they got it right. So far, no European country has voted wrong twice in a row. …

In 2005, the peoples of both France and the Netherlands voted “No” in referendums about the EU’s 2004 Constitutional Treaty, the so-called “European Constitution.” The latter comprises a staggering 67,850 words. Leading proponents of a European superstate, such as Jacques Delors, the former president of the European Commission, the EU’s executive, immediately said that the French and the Dutch would have to vote again.

Reuters released a poll a week ago showing a plurality of support for Lisbon in Ireland this time around, with opposition considerably lower. I’ll have a report this weekend on the results, but it doesn’t look good for those in Europe who want to maintain some sovereignty within the EU.

(h/t Maetenloch via Ace of Spades HQ)