IN CONFLICT. STATUTE LAW AND MINISTERIAL REGULATIONS.

Evening Post, Volume LXXVII, Issue 102, 1 May 1909, Page 9

IN CONFLICT. STATUTE LAW AND MINISTERIAL REGULATIONS.

MUNICIPALITIES' DISABILITIES. THE RECENT ELECTIONS. The municipal election?, which were held throughout New Zealand a day or two ago, have focussed attention, once mow on some aspects of the law jukD • regulations that affect these elections. A remark that there had be«n numerous eomplainte made to The Post concerning the duplication of names on the present roll of the City of Wellington, and the presence on it of the names of many dead persons, provoked tha reply from one in,' a position to speak authoritatively that the conflict between statute law and Ministerial regulations caused the trouble. Tho Town Clerk, who was the officer charged to superintend preparation of the municipal roll, was hampered by two contradictory provisions. Regulations gazetted on the 17th January, 1901, provided — The Town Clerk shall place on the roll the name (1) of every person of whose qualification as a voter he is satisfied ; or (2) of every person who makes' or delivers or transmits to him at hAs office a claim for enrolment drawn up in .presoribed form. That was bad enough, remarked the critic, but there was worse. Possibly the Town Clerk might hafve set his foot down on the mandatory clause 2, and have taken his stand upon the power to enquire into the bona fides of any applicant -which clause 1 seemed to confer on him. But this ground was cut fvom under his feet by clause 16, which set out that a fine of £5 should be inflicted on any town clerk who wilfulty excluded or iinreaisonably delayed putting on the District Electors' List the name of any person who had sent in "a written claim for enixjlment in the statutory form provided. It was the existence of such contradictory provisions as these that made possible the municipal roll stuffing 1 and other abuses. The statute goes ela-borately into the question of qualification of ratepayers, and then the regulations upset the whole of the safeguards by specifically stating that the Town Clerk has- got. to put on the roll anybody who likes to make application, whether he is qualified or not qualified. WHY THE ROLL IS ABNORMALLY LARGE. Sub-paragraph 5 of paragraph 3 of the regulations of 1901 gives power for purging the roll to some extent; persons who do not vote at an election may be removed from the roll by the Town Clerk, provided they are not freeholders or ratepayers ; also the Town Clerk is empowered to strike off the roll the names of people who are dead, or who to his knowledge have lost their qualifications. The latter provision, though ih seemed specific enough, failed (rej marked our informant) because it made no provision for official notification to the municipal authorities of the death of any elector. Under the Electoral Act, the Registrar of Vital Statistics sends notice, officially, to the responsible people for general elections of all deaths within the districts concerned, but there •is no such provision under the Municipal Act or its regulations. Paragraphs 5 and 6 of the regulations state that the Town Clerk shall omit from the roll the names of every person enrolled in virtue of it residential qualification who, not being a candidate at such election, fails, as' shown by a comparison of the rolls used at any election of a mayor or councillors, to have voted thereat. This showed once more the futility of the attempt to combine statute law and regulations. The Local Elections Act, 1908, which was the general Act relating to these things, and which controlled them all unless there was some provision in the special Act relating to the specific matter, provided that at the close of the poll the returning officer and each deputy returning officer shall seal up the papers used at his booth, together with a copy of the roll on which has been kept the record of the persons voting in the booth, and fend them all tD the Magistrate's Court. The clerk of the Magistrate's Court keeps them for six months, and is by statute charged not to permit them to be opened, except upon order of a court of competent jurisdiction. And at the end of six months he is required to destroy them. How, then, could there be a purification of the roll? This, it is contended, is an absurd position that the country is placed in, and it seemed to the authority mentioned above that the only possible escape, until Parliament awakened to a sense of what was needed of it, was to decide to make the regulations override the Act, and to that end instruct the poll clerics to keep the rolls out of the court. Then the cancelled names could be compared with an unmarked roll, and a revision made by striking off that roll the names of those people who had not voted and who were on the roll solely by reason of residential qualifications. There was a penalty of £50 provided in case of any deputy or returning officer opening such a packet, but as the officer charged with preparation of the roll (the Town Clerk) was not usually the returning officer, that danger might be passed over. THE RESIDENTIAL QUALIFICATION. The residential qualification was a very hard one to test. It was notorious, to-day, that many persons not qualified in equity to vote were on the roll. Unless absolute discretion was given to the Town Clerk to decide as to the bona fides of a claim under the residential qualification, there would be no security for the community's interest. Our informant claimed that such applicants ought to be required to prove, beyond reasonable doubt, that their claims to be enrolled were equitable. That was the English law, and it should be New Zealand's. J. J. O'Donoghue writes to The Post complaining that his name was left off the roll. He states that he filled in a form, and on going to the booth found that he could not vote.