VOTED TWICE

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25139, 21 March 1947, Page 3

VOTED TWICE

MAN COMMITTED FOR SENTENCE (P.A.) DUNEDIN, March 20. In the Magistrate’s Court to-day Tnomas McNeil, a motor-driver aged 35 pleaded guilty to having voted twice at the last General. Election in the capacity of an absentee voter. The accused was committed to the Supreme Court for sentence. Harold John Worthington, the returning officer for the Mornington electorate, said in evidence that during the official count of the votes which were cast in his electorate he had forwarded all applications by persons who claimed absent votes to the Registrar of Electors at Dunedin so that he could identify the persons who had made applications as being registered electors. In the papers returned by the registrar the witness had found two applications in the name of Thomas McNeil, labourer, of 11 Glen road, in the Mornington electorate. The first application had been made at Hokitika, in the Westland electoral district, and the second from a booth at-Reefton in the Buller electoral district. Acting-Detective R. W. Griffiths said he had interviewed the accused, who had •made a statement that he had been working as a labourer at Ross, and had stayed there until election day. About 9 a.m. he \ went into a booth and asked for an absentee voting paper, which he had signed. He could -not recall having cast a vote, although he said that if the clerk said he did he must have done so. He was under the influence of liquor at the time. The accused added that he went to Reefton by rail-car, and car. and accompanied some men into a polling booth there about 7 p.m. He admitted having cast a vote there.