Warning on rolls

Press, 26 July 1978, Page 3

Warning on rolls

PA Auckland The mistake-ridden electoral rolls could lead to the Governor-General (Sir Keith Holyoake) declaring a narrow Labour victory in the coming General Election a non-result, said the Labour member of Parliament for Sydenham, Mr J. Kirk, speaking at Auckland University. He said it was not known htrw the elections would be held with 9000 mistakes on each roll. “If the Labour Party was to win the election by two seats with a majority of 300 in each, the Prime Minister may think the rolls are too much of a mess and the Gove r n o r-General may declare the election a .nonresult, as Govemars-General in the Commonwealth are likely to do,” he said. “It is only since this Government got in that the rolls have been very dirty and very manipulate,” he said. The 86,000 New Zealand voters in Australia had five days to cast their votes in three offices. He likened this to making all the people in one electorate vote at one office. "That is not possible and I suggest it is not democracy,” he said. The National Electoral Control Office staff in Lower Hutt and Post Office officials around the country report a steady stream of voters’ resignation cards before the main electoral roll is closed tonight. But the chief electoral officer, Mr J. Wright, is not inviting a last-minute surge of applications from people who think they may not be on the roll. Tonight’s cut-off is “only an administrative arrangement where we close off processing to get the main roll printed,” he said yesterday. Registration cards that did not reach his office in time would be processed for the supplementary roll.