CANDIDATES FOR LOCAL BODIES

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27339, 3 May 1954, Page 10

CANDIDATES FOR LOCAL BODIES

CHOICE BY POSTAL BALLOT

CITIZENS’ ASSOCIATION’S DECISION

Postal ballots for the choice of the Christchurch Citizens’ and Ratepayers’ Association’s candidates for local body elections are now permissible. , The annual meeting of the association adopted an alteration of the rules which makes the practice possible. Before the proposal was carried, it met spirited opposition from Mr J. J. Brownlee, who said a postal ballot would make it possible for a candidate to get 50 or 100 associates to join the association and influence the ballot. He had been told by a leading authority on local body affairs that the association’s postal ballot last year was irregular. There would be an unseen majority not interested in an election, but only in an individual. Mr Browlee said. The association should stick to the rules and not perpetuate something that was wrong. The chairman of the general committee (Mr H. P. Smith) said it was illogical to talk about how dangerous such a rule would be if the association wanted the rule. It was not dangerous to ask all the people comprising a body to have a say in the choice of candidates. To say that was to imply that an annual .general, meeting of a body if it decided to hold a postal ballot was not competent to make such a decision. By the same token, it should have all its other powers taken from it. Noth withstanding the legal opinion quoted by Mr Brownlee, he felt an annual meeting had.the right to determine the policy of the body.