WRITS ISSUED.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 20028, 9 September 1930, Page 14

WRITS ISSUED.

♦ . TWO BY-ELECTIONS ON OCTOBER BTH. tanas association teleobak.) WELLINGTON, September 8. Writs were issued to-day for the by-elections to fill the two vacancies in Parliament caused by the deaths of Sir George Hunter and Sir Maui Pomare. Both by-elections willjie held on the same day, October Bth. The writ for Waipawa is returnable by October 18th or not later than forty days after its issue. No number of days is stipulated for the return of a writ for the Maori election, but in the case of the Western Maori by-election October 25th has been nominated as the day by which the writ must be returned.

No roli is compiled of Maori electors, and this, together with the fact that voting is by declaration in the presence of the Registrar, makes the recount and scrutiny of the ballot papers after a Maori election a much more laborious and complicated process than the check-up following the contest for a European constituency. Wellington and the greater part ot Auckland Gity and suburbs are included in the Western Maori electorate, the eastern boundary being a line more or less up the centre of the North Island. Strange to say, the Maori population of the Chatham Islands is included in the electorate. Prom a European point of view the Chathams are in the Lyttelton electorate, but although the Maoris there nave a closer geographical association with the Southern Maori electorate, their tribal interests lie with, their fellow-countrymen in Western Maori.