Vote law ’must change’

Press, 12 June 1979, Page 27

Vote law ’must change’

PA Wellington The instructions of the Chief Electoral Officer to his returning officers were “overturned on a conservative court judgment, on the initiative of the National Government,” the leader of the Labour -Party (Mr Rowling) has said. Mr Rowling was commenting after the tabling in Parliament of the circular issued by the Chief Electoral Officer (Mr J. L. Wright) the day before the General Election.

Mr Rowling said the circular was an instruction to returning officers that if the intention of a vote was clear, then it was to be allowed. The Electoral Court considering the Hunua petition last month disallowed those votes in which the voter had used ticks and crosses, irrespective of how clear the indication was.

The circular issued by the Chief Electoral Officer said that if the intention of the elector was clear, the vote must be allowed.

“It is fundamental to our electoral system that everyone qualified as an elector should cast a vote and it follows that an ‘informal’ vote is only where the intention of the elector is not clear,” the circular said.

Mr Rowling said the circular was a document which set out how the spirit, and the inherent rights of the electoral system, were to be protected. The Labour Party would not rest until the interpretation of the electoral law, inherent in the Chief Electoral Officer’s circular, was set out iclearly in statute, he said.