MUNICIPAL ROLLS SCRUTINISED

Evening Post, Volume LXXVII, Issue 111, 12 May 1909, Page 8

MUNICIPAL ROLLS SCRUTINISED

DOUBLE VOTING DETECTED. Mr. Ames, Municipal Returning Officer, has made a comparison of the roll used at the recent Mayoral and council elections. The roll contained 30,146 names, made up as follow :—: — Ratepayers and Freeholders 13,283 Residential ... ' 16,863 The number of residential electors who recorded their votes totalled less than one-half of the number on the roll. Specifically, there *were 7126 residential votes recorded, and 9737 unrecorded. The Town Clerk has power to strike off the roll the whole of the 9737 non-voters ; a step that would give the roll a purging that is generally regarded as desirable. It appeals that 46 people voted twice at the election, nineteen of them being women. Mr. Ames believes, however, that in most of the cases the apparent duplicity arose through misapprehension on the part of the poll clerks. A proof of this is seen in the case of the deputy returning officer at Sydney-street booth, who, it is said, voted at his own booth, and was not away from it once during the whole day> yet he appears as having voted a second time at another booth (St. Thomas's), situated some three miles from Sydney-street. Probably a person of the same name voted at St. Thomas's, and when the poll clerk intended to mark this voter's name off he marked off the similar name which was in contiguity. A somewhat similar happening to this was explained* and cleared up in connection with the local option poll enquiry held at Petone a few months ago-