SCHOOL COMMITTEE ELECTIONS.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 6742, 26 April 1893, Page 2

SCHOOL COMMITTEE ELECTIONS.

Fon several years Major Steward introduced Bills into our General Assembly

having for their object the election of Pchool Committees en a sensible system In the end he succeeded in setting the Apt of 1890 placed on the Statute Book. Under that law plump voting was abolished, and tliQ nomination of candidates one week bofore the election was made necessary. The Act made a great improvement on the old

style of doing things, but it had its faults, not the least being that voters had to sign their ballot papers before a Justice of the Peace, a postmaster, or a State Bchoolmaster. This made the measure very clumsy, and to a great many very unpopular, because it precluded boys from voting, and others who had no right to vote. But the effect of the Aot was noticeable in the superior class of people who were elected to fke Committees. This should alone have satisfied the Legislature. The spirit of change, however, was rampant in the nevf Parliament; end the Act was repealed in favor of the wretched abortion under which the School Committee elections were conducted last Monday. We call the Act of 1891 an abortion because it revived the old system of "poet " nominations ; that ia to say, of nominations at the time of meeting, and it did away with the privilege of voting during the day. Why a School Committee election cannot be conducted oh precisely

the same lines as any other local election it is hard to say. However, the Legislature has done its best to rnahe it impossible for the householders of a school district to record their votes, by compelling them to crowd into one building at one particular time, and then to have sprung at them the names of unknown candidates. Under such

circumetancss, very fow people will take the trouble to attend a scramble of that kind, with the result that the door is left open for designing men to put on a committee whom they ploase. Wo are convinced that if the names of the candidates had been posted a week before the election, very few, if any, of the present Napier School Committee

would have been elected. This appears to have been well known to their friends, who advieed that no nominations should be made till the last minute. This, however, should not have prevented others from bein c; openly nominated, and it is much to he regretted that it was not done. But the mode of voting is so objectionable, and the hour so inconvenient, that we do not wonder

that only some hundred people took the trouble to go to the meeting. Before every householder can have a chance of voting the poll must be kept open all day, with a properly appointed returning officer. This is the second election under the Act of 1891, and no one will say that it has effected an improvement. We trust Major Steward will again come to the rescue, and amend the Act in suoh a way as to ensure the election of representative committees.