NOT TILL FRIDAY

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 95, 19 October 1938, Page 15

NOT TILL FRIDAY

CANTERBURY FINALS

RULE AS TO SCRUTINEERS

It will be Friday at least before the final results are available for the six Canterbury electorates which are still in doubt, following the General Election on Saturday, states today's "Christchurch Press." The scrutiny of the rolls has been progressing in every electorate; but it is the postal, absentee, and seamen's votes which will decide the issue ""wherever it is in doubt, and these votes cannot be computed", checked, and added to the provisional figures until the scrutiny is finished and the official count completed. , The action of the Labour Party in proposing Mr. T. H. McCombs for the position of scrutineer in the , final count for Riccarton led to the disclosure of an interesting point of electoral law. A candidate cannot become a scrutineer. Mr. McCombs was the successful candidate for Lyttelton, and was automatically debarred. The returning officer for Riccarton, Mr. Albert Freeman, secured a ruling on the point from the Crown Law Office, which indicated very definitely that a candidate could not *act as a scrutineer. Returning officers in Wellington are still busy scrutinising electoral rolls, this work being delayed by the unusually large number of absentee and postal votes to be checked. Some papers handed in in Otago and Southland on Saturday did not reach Wellington until today. It is. expected that the official count of votes will be started -in most instances tomorrow, but in one case the, scrutinising of the rolls majr'occupy at least part of tomorrow.