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Alex Orr (Letters, 23 June) suggests that the franchise for any future referendum on Scotland seceding from the UK should be the electoral register, as it was in the 2014 referendum. That franchise was less than perfect. I was born and educated in Scotland and I have lived in Scotland for 52 years of my life. Between 2013 and 2019 I lived and worked in Africa. Throughout this period I continued to pay Council Tax on my property in Scotland, and to pay Income Tax. I was registered on the electoral register and was able to vote in the EU referendum in 2016. However, as an overseas voter, I was denied a vote in the 2014 independence referendum. In contrast, I was astonished to discover, a friend of my son, from Singapore and living in Scotland in order to attend university, was entitled to vote.

I suggest that the 2014 definition of the franchise (including the extension of the vote to 16 and 17 year-olds) deliberately increased the representation of impressionable young people while reducing that of people with wider life experience who may be harder to persuade of the benefits of separation. Is this not “gerrymandering”?

Should any future referendum take place, the arrangements relating to the franchise and to the question on the ballot paper should achieve as wide a consensus as possible. It is not for Nicola Sturgeon and her SNP acolytes to set the rules or to stifle the debate. GEORGE RENNIE

Inverness