"ON THE ROLL?"

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1086, 27 March 1911, Page 4

"ON THE ROLL?"

THE LAST DAY TO-MOKROW. To-morrow is the last day upon which' applications for enrolment upon tho new municipal roll will be accepted. The increased enrolment which naturally was anticipated, in view of the lato extension of the franchise has not yet come to pass.nor docs it seem likely to do so. On tho old roU, before it was purge , ? thero were about 31,000 names. Tho new roll bore on Saturday only a littlo over 27,000. The corporation officials to whom the completion of the poll has been entrusted estimate that there must be in the city at least 5000 eligible electors who have not yet sent in their names. In view, however, 0 fthe apathy that has.ruled of late it seems very doubtful whether anj large proportion of this number will enrol. No doubt a certain number of application forms have been held back until the last moment and there will Ins in any case tho usual eleventh-hour rush of applicants, but the chances are that tho new roll will bo smaller than tho old roll which it is superseding. By purging, the old roll was reduced to a total of something like 16,000 nffmes. Of tho eleven thousand odd enrolments cmbodied in the supplementary roll a very largo proportion avo directly attributable to the organising activities of the Labour party. Against this preponderance of Labour votes in tho later enrolments, however, must bo set the fact that the number of ratepayers enrolled will in all likelihood bear a larger proportion to the total number of electors, in tho case of the latest roll than in the case of its predo« cessor.