POLL COSTS 10/- A VOTE

Evening Post, Issue 86, 11 April 1936, Page 24

POLL COSTS 10/- A VOTE

"According to the figures, it has cost the board 10s for every vote cast," said Mr. W. C. Kennedy at Tuesday's meeting of the Thames Valley Power Board, when expressing dissatisfaction at the lack of interest shown by ratepayers at the recent poll on the raising of a loan of £75,000 for reticulation extension. Only 800 votes were recorded, at a cost to the board of approximately £400 (states a Te Aroha correspondent). "It seems a wicked waste," said. Mr. Kennedy, "that we have to pay a man two guineas to sit in a booth and smoke cigarettes all day, without a single vote being recorded, as happened in'two of our booths." If this state of affairs continued, Mr. Kennedy added^ ratepayers should not be surprised if they found their privilege of authorising loans was arbitrarily taken out of their hands by the Government and-handed to some form of loans board, or left solely to the discretion of the- local authority concerned.