THE ELECTORAL ROLLS.

Evening Post, Volume LXXVI, Issue LXXVI, 1 July 1908, Page 7

THE ELECTORAL ROLLS.

A SOUTHERN COMPLAINT. CHIEF ELECTORAL OFFICER EXPLAINS. [Bx Telegbaph.— Special to Thb Poar.) DUNEDIN, This Day. As showing the imperiect and unreliable condition, of the newly-issued main, rolls printed at the Government Printing Office at Wellington, a correspon lent of the Star says he has been at pains to analyse the contents of the roll of the district in which ho lives. He finds that five persons with whom he was personally acquainted have paid the debt of nature, yet their names are retained on one Dunedin roll. How many more there are in the same category it is impossible frt him to say. The above telegram was brought under the notice of Mr. F. W. 'Mansfield, the Chief Electoral Officer, by a Post Reporter to-day. "The answer," said Mr. Mansfield, "is simple. The Act provides that the Registrar of Electors shall remove from the roll the names of electors whoso deaths are reported to him monthly by the Registrar of Deaths. It sometimes happens that a death docs not occur at the deceased's address on the roll, and the Registrar of Electors must not remove from the roll the name of an elector reported dead by the Registrar of Deaths until the description is full and complete. In any case, where the descriptiondoes not agree, the police are called upon to make full enquiry and present a report to the Registrar of Electors. The percentage of cases of the kind referred to in the Dunedin telegram is remarkably small under the circumstances. The greatest care is taken by the Registrar of Deaths, who quotes the number of the deceased person, on the roll in his monthly report to the Registrar of Electors, who in his turn has to verify the report of the Registrar of Deaths before he removes a name from trie roll."