DECLARATION VOTES

Dominion, Volume 24, Issue 189, 8 May 1931, Page 10

DECLARATION VOTES

Electors Not on Rolls

Several hundred votes were recorded by declaration in the civic elections on Wednesday and these have to be carefully scrutinised and investigated to satisfy the authorities that the persons so voting were entitled to do so. The law regarding votes by declaration for Parliamentary elections was passed about six yeifrs ago and was applied to local body elections. The Act provided that the officer in charge of a booth may take a vote by declaration where the person desiring to vote claims that he or she is entitled to be on the register, and signs a declaration to the effect that “when the said roll was closed I had reasonable cause to believe that my name had been entered thereon.”

So long as the declaration is properly signed the officer has no power to ask why tlie applicants had reason to believe the mime was on the roll. Although the main municipal roll and supplementary rolls are open for four months before the election, and the fact is extensively advertised, the officer cannot ask if the applicant had examined the roll to see if the name had been omitted, or had signed the regular form for the name to be entered.

There are ninny who feel that allowing voting by declaration opens the door to unscrupulous persons who may try to vote when they are not entitled to do so, also that it tends to encourage neglect by electors to see that they are enrolled. The number of names “inadvertently omitted” in these cases is said to be only an infinitesimal percentage of the whole, tlie majority being due to the fact that the elector lias taken no trouble to get enrolled. Desiring for some reason or other to vote when the time comes, the difficulty is overcome by the simple expedient of signing a declaration.