ACTS GOVERNING ELECTIONS.

Evening Post, Volume LXXVII, Issue 110, 11 May 1909, Page 8

ACTS GOVERNING ELECTIONS.

♦ A PALMERSTON CASE. INTERESTING POINT. ~

:(Bt Tslegbafh. — Special to The Post.] PALMERSTON N., This Day. Mr. A. D. Thomson, S.M., gave judgment yesterday in the case in which Michael Moynihan, hotelkeeper, of Shannon, was charged with committing breaches of the Act governing elections, by interfering with electors on their way to the poll for a Licensing Committee, by handing to them cards bearing directions as to how to vote. The magistrate dismissed the case with costs. An interesting point as to the legislation covering the licensing elections was raised by the judgment. The Licensing Act of 1908 provided, by section 44, that licensing elections shall be conducted in the same manner as elections of members of Parliament. The question "was whether this clause incorporated the provisions as to offences. His Worship ! could conceive of no reason why the act complained of in the present instance should be forbidden in a Parliamentary election, and allowed in a Licensing Committee election, but the only question for him to consider was what the Legislature had said on the subject. It seemed that the words in section 44, "Every election shall be conducted in the same manner as elections of members of Parliament," only referred to the acts of the returning officer and the procedure adapted by him in carrying out the election. The section did not say that the conduct of all persons in a Licensing CommilNje election should be the' same -as if it were a Parliamentary election, but simply that the election should be conducted in the same .manner. That, his Worship took to mean, was that the election should be conducted by the returning officer according to the same procedure.