Candidates May Bribe Voters With Liquor

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30395, 20 March 1964, Page 11

Candidates May Bribe Voters With Liquor

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copvright) LONDON, March 1». Britain’s oddest election takes place in the Hertfordshire town of Kernel Hempstead today, the “Daily Mail” says. Candidates can offer inducements such as free beer to

gain votes, with no comeback from the law.

The election is for the six vacancies on the Boxmoor Trust which controls about 150 acres of surrounding moorland.

“Inhabitant householders” from the town and the nearby hamlet of Bovingdon have 26 candidates from which to choose. The election—the first since

1922—has no regard for the Ballot Act There will be no ballot boxes. Instead a staff of clerks will collect voting papers at the 800-year-old parish church and mark up the voting as it goes along for all to see. Candidates who find themselves dropping behind can offer whatever inducements they like to pick up lost ground. Said a trust spokesman last night: “In the early days of the trust’s existence (set up in 1809) this is reputed to have happened. “But we are not expecting it tomorrow. It would be most embarrassing in this modern age.”