ELECTION INQUIRY

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25177, 7 May 1947, Page 8

ELECTION INQUIRY

ALL WITNESSES NOW HEARD

Electoral Court For Raglan

SUBMISSIONS FOR RESPONDENT (P.A.) HAMILTON, May 6. Renewed interest attached to the proceedings of the Electoral Court today when, after some 120.000 words of evidence had been recorded, the last witness was dismissed and counsels’ addresses began before the Chief Justice, Sir Humphrey O'Leaiy, and the Senior Pusne Judge. Sir Archibald Blair. The first to make submissions was Mr T. P. Cleary, senior counsel for respondent. Mr Cleary reviewed the evidence heard in support of various categories of objections by bo'.h sides, and stated under each classification ■which objections he considered had been sustained, which had failed, and which were arguable before the Court. Beginning shortly before lunch, Mr Cleary spoke for two and a half hours, ant had not finished dealing with objections on residential grounds when the Court rose this afternoon.

Frequent reference was made by Mi Cleary, as it has been made by counsel -n both throughout the hearing. to an aspect of what is known as the Seddon-o*Brien case. The matter is of importance, as it may affect the validity of at least six '*otes in the present petition Mr Justice Stringer and Mr Justice Ostler heard a petition in 1926 affecting the Westland seat contested by Mr T. E. Y Seddon and Mr J. O’Brien The Court then held that an elector’s three months’ residential qualification in an electorate, although not existing at the date of application for registration, could nevertheless be fulfilled if the period were completed before election day.

5.11 W. J. S.m, K.C., in opening die petitioner’s case in the present hearing invited the Court to hold that this decision was based on a misinterpretation of a decision of the Full Eench of the Supreme Court in a Hawke’s Bay petition in 1914, <nd therefore invited the Court not to follow the Seddon-O’Brien decision in this respect. , The final 12 of the respondent’s objections to votes cast in the Raglan election were heard by the Court this morning. Four postal votes were challenged because no electorate had been filled in in the accompanying declaration (in one instance the voter’s name, occupation, and address also had been omitted). Seven postal votes were challenged on the ground that the declaration was unsigned by the voter, one of the group also being in the petitioner’s list for the same reasons.

Mr Cleary, for the respondent (Mr A. C. Baxter), withdrew one of these objections when it was discovered during forma] evidence that the voter was blind The final objection was to the declaration vote of Frederick Wilkinson, of Huntly, having been disallowed, the respondent claiming that it was a valid declaration vote. 4. voter who after he had lived in Huntly for 30 years and had voted several times in Raglan, including at the 1946 by-election, found his name removed from the roll for the General Election in November, although he was still living at the same address, gave evidence to-day. He was Frederick Wilkinson, miner, of

whose declaration vote respondent sought to have allowed. Wilkinson said he enrolled in 1935 and voted at the 1943 General Election and the 1946 by-election. His wife, who lived with him at Bailey street Huntly, was also on the roll, as were his father, also named Frederick Wilkinson, a miner, who lived at Hakaroa street Huntly, and his sister, who lived with his father. Between the by-election and the General Election in November he received from the Registrar of Electors no inquiry as to his address and no notification of his removal from the roll, but when the main roll was - published he learned that his name had been deleted, although his wife, father, and sister all remained on the roll. He applied for admission to the supplementary roll, but received no answer. When he found he was not on the supplementary roll he wrote to the Registrar just before the election, saying he had lived 30 years in Huntly and had not changed his address, and claiming the right to vote by declaration on the ground that his name had been wrongly removed from the roll. On election day he cast a vote Oy declaration. In January this year he made a further application for restoration to the Raglan roll, and had been notified that his name was now back on the roll Frederick Wilkinson, senior, said he lived in Hakaroa street, Huntly, from 1919 until last year, when he removed to Main street, Huntly. He voted in Raglan in 1943. at the 1946 by-ele< tion. and at the 1946 General Election. He still appeared on the main roll last year as living at Hakaroa street. He first enrolled for Raglan in 1925. “Cards Gummed Together” Johh Cameron Halliday, postmaster at Huntly, and formerly Registrar of Electors for Raglan, said the enrolment cards of the two Wilkinsons, father and son. were gummed together during the consolidation of the roll between the by-election and the printing of the main roll for the 1946 General Election. The cards were then referred to him, and they appeared to indicate a duplication of registrations by the same voter. He compared the signatures on the 1925 and 1935 enrolment cards. and considered them identical. No reference was made to the fact that both had recorded a vote at the by-election. No inquiry card was sent to either address, and neither the father nor son was notified of the removal of one listing of the name from the roll Halliday said it had appeared to him that Frederick Wilkinson had registered from Hakaroa street in 1925 and reregistered from Bailey street in 1935. From this conclusion, normally the older registration would have been removed, but the clerk replacing the two gummed cards in the tray had placed the more recent one underneath. Otherwise. Wilkinson, sen.. would have been removed from the roll instead of his son Witness said that between the nublicati'«n of the

main roll in 1946 and the closing of the supplementary roll no application was received from the son. • When his letter arrived on November 26 it was too late to do anything about his enrolment. Halliday said the declaration vote recorded by Wilkinson was disallowed because the signatures on the letter received on November 26 and on the declaration signed on November 27 differed from those on the two enrolment cards (Wilkinson, jun. had explained during his evidence that an injury to his right hand caused him to make the signatures last November with his left hand). However, the scrutiny of the enrolment by Wilkinson jun., in 1935 established that he had not been on the roll at another address in the electorate. The presentation of evidence ended at 12.30 p.m Case For Respondent The multiplicity and diversity of cases to which the Court had listened in the last three weeks occasioned both Mr R. Hardie Boys and himself some concern as to how best to present their submissions, said Mr T. P. Cleary, for the respondent, beginning his summing up. They thought the best way to approach the matter was to lake the cases by the well-defined classes into which they fell and in each class to deal with the cases presented by both sides. In each class he would attempt to say. first, which cases the respondent considered had been proved by the one side or the other, second, which had clearly not been proved, and third, which ones were arguable and. required tc be treated in more detail. In the first class of objections—voters resident outside the boundaries, the petitioner's list had 21 names. Of these. 18 were not questioned by the respondent, but in the other three instances it was maintained that the petitioner’s objections could not succeed. These three cases, said Mr Cleary, were those of a person who had undoubtedly qualified in Raglan, but might be said to have lost qualification by temporary removal, and two voters who were members of J Force who clearly had a right to vote. The respondent’s 11 objections in this class had. all been agreed to by the petitioner two of the names being common to both lists. In the next class, that of voters alleged to lack three months’ residence in Raglan at the date of the election the petitioner had presented 26 objections, Mr Cleary said. Of these it was admitted that the petitioner had proved 15 of his objections, two further names were common to both lists, four objections must fail, and the remaining five were arguable. Mr Cleary, continuing his submissions after lunch, said that in the four cases in wh ch he claimed the petitioner had failed to establish that a voter lacked three months’ residence in the electorate at the time of the election, the evidence showed in each instance that the voter arrived in Raglan before August 27. Of the respondent’s seven objections under the same heading, Mr Cleary said, two were not pursued. One name was common to both lists, but the other four objections had been proved. Two other votes challenged by respondent in another group must also be disallowed because the voters lacked three months in the electorate. Mr Cleary said while two. ot the voters challenged by the respondent were late by only two days in their move into the electorate the margin was equally narrow in some of thje petitioner’s cases Mr Cleary, reviewing the evidence in these cuses. said that if it were claimed by the petitioner that one elector established the necessary qualification for himself and his wife by the purchase of stock in the Raglan electorate on August 27, 1946, although he did not move xn uniil August 29, then it was no less reasonable for respondent to argue that another elector who had furniture in the electorate from August 21 was equally qualified, although he did not take up residence within the boundaries until early September. Seddon-O’Brien Case Dealing with the next class of objections—to voters alleged to have been resident for less than three months at the dste of registration and/or the closing of the rolls—Mr Cleary said the respondent had nd similar objections. This category was introduced by petitioner to raise the Seddon and O’Brien case issue, but, in fact, in only one of the petitioner’s four objections in this group might the Seddon-O’Brien ruling apply. One challenge in this group had been abandoned by the petitioner, and Mr Cleary submitted the other three must fail, subject only to the possible application of the Seddon-O’Brien ruling to one of them. The next group reviewed by Mr Cleary was of voters removed from Raglan and qualified in another electorate. He conceded that of the petitioner’s 24 objections in this class 10 had been proved, while another taken up by J;he petitioner from the respondent’s jist also had been proved. Five of these objections must fail, one had not been pursued by the petitioner, and the other eight were arguable. The objections Mr Cleary held had failed in this group included those against Selwyn Charles Ellwood and his wife, Iris Mae Ellwood, said by the petitioner to have moved from Raglan to Eketahuna. Mr Cleary said the proof of identity necessary in all cases of objection was lacking in these instances. The petitioner had called two witnesses from Eketahuna, including the Ellwoods’ landlord and milkman, but no attempt was made to bring the voters themselves to Court. Although this was not the only case in which the voters did not give evidence, it was the only case on either side in which no attempt was made to bring the voter to Court. It was a reasonable inference that the reason Ellwood was not brought to Court might well be that evidence he would have given would have been in conflict with the allegation the petitioner preferred to make behind his back. “This is the only case in which an attempt had been made to disfranchise an elector without attempting to bring him to Court to let him tel] his story.’’ said Mr Cleary Mr Justice Blair: What allegation has been made? Mr Cleary: The allegation that he was not entitled to vote. Mr Cleary added that it had been observed that Ellwood could have seen from the newspapers that he had been challenged. “Is that the way my friends seek to bring things to the notice of those they seek to disfranchise?’’ said Mr Cleary Of the 22 challenges by the respondent on the ground of the voters’ removal and qualification elsewhere Mr Cleary claimed eight as proved, while one name was common to both lists.