RECALL SYSTEM.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 139, 13 June 1936, Page 14

RECALL SYSTEM.

OPERATING IN ALBERTA

EDMONTON (Alberta, Canada)

Alberta's Social Credit Government lias made effective by legislation a plan under which members of the Legislative Assembly may be "recalled" if they lost the confidence of their constituencies. The procedure prescribed is aS follows: Ten registered voters sign an application to the Government for the circulation of petitions of recall in a constituency. One of these ten must act as agent and furnish a 200-dollnr fee to set the machinery in motion. Within ten days the Clerk of the Assembly must post petition forms in all the post offices in the riding, where they are open for signatures for thirty days. The petitions at the end of that time go before a court for scrutiny, and if they are found to contain the bona-flde signatures of two-thirds of the persons orT the most recent election lists the seat is declared vacant.

Clitics of the measure claim tliat in practice tliis recall system will be unworkable. They point out that 0(> 2-3 per cent of eligible voters actually is 82 per cent of the vote. cast in the latest provincial election, and that so great a degree of unanimity in opposition to a sitting member is quite beyond reasonable expectation.