INTELLIGENCE TESTS

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 106, 8 May 1933, Page 6

INTELLIGENCE TESTS

The proportion ■of voting papers which failed to show clearly the intention of the electors was high in Wellington this year. This has led to renewal of discussion on the question whether the cross marking of ballot papers should not replace the strike-out method. It may be admitted at once that the voting system should not deliberately be made complicated and . puzzling. But how far should we go in simplifying the system so that the votes of the least interested and the less intelligent should count? If an elector will not take sufficient pains to master what is not a very difficult system, what is the real worth of the vote thus cast carelessly? To count up to fifteen is not a high test of intelligence and education. It is more difficult to select fifteen names from thirty-five or forty. Yet this may be done with less study and interest than the average follower of horse-racing gives to the details of a race-card. The whole trouble is that electors do not give sufficient attention to these questions. Speculators at the racecourse do not make mistakes in buying their tickets—at least they do not take the wrong ticket in error, but because they think it is right. Apparently electors often vote for one candidate while intending to vote for another. The more trouble is taken to eliminate these errors the more we give the power of democracy into the hands of those who are least careful how thejr, ue^ft,