SERVICE VOTERS

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVI, Issue 67, 16 September 1943, Page 4

SERVICE VOTERS

THE OVERSEAS BALLOT

(Official War Correspondent, N.Z.E.F.)

NEW CALEDONIA, Sept. 10. The results of the election voting by all New Zealand members of the Armed Forces in the Pacific should be in the hands of the Chief Electoral Officer in Wellington on election day. "Zero hour" for recording service votes overseas in this area is 7 'p.m. local time on September 24, after which the results will be collated at certain centralised points and forwarded to New Zealand by signal. Many thousands of New Zealanders overseas will vote, and over 200 polling assistants, the majority of whom have had electoral experience in New Zealand, will handle the Pacific voting. Hundreds of miles will be travelled by mobile polling booths serving isolated de« tachments. At least 10,000 miles will have been covered by the special returning officer, Major G. E. Pollock, by the time he completes his duties. Supplies of voting material are already at their locations, and election information is being distributed by poster and by promulgation in unit orders, and lists of all candidates will be ' posted in camps and polling booths on the days of voting. Rolls of all members of services showing their last residential addresses and electorates have been prepared, and every person applying for a ballot paper will be checked on the roll and be required to produce his paybook, which will be endorsed as the ballot paper is issued. Votes by declaration may be made by those who have no paybooks, who claim, that the address shown on the rolls is now inaccurate, or whose names do not appear on the rolls at all, owing to their having left New Zealand only recently. Special ballot papers, on which the voter will write the name of the candidate for whom he wishes to vote, are being provided.