The Feilding Star. Oroua & Kiwitea Counties Gazette Published Daily. MONDAY, DECEMBER 15, 1912 BLUNDERS AT ELECTIONS.

Feilding Star, Volume XXVI, Issue 142, 15 December 1902, Page 2

The Feilding Star. Oroua & Kiwitea Counties Gazette Published Daily. MONDAY, DECEMBER 15, 1912 BLUNDERS AT ELECTIONS.

The system under which the General Election and Local Option polls are taken may be good enough in theory — but it is wretchedly bad in practice. That opinion is confirmed by the ' number of informal votes -which i were recorded at the last election, and the number of recounts which were demanded. It would appear the Returning Officers have been in no way to blame, but that the Deputy Eeturning Officers were not as efficient as they should have been. Our contemporary, the Wanganui Herald, considers that the Returning Officers ought to be allowed to secure the services of capable deputies, and that can only be done by allowing the former to pay the latter a proper sum for the duties they are called on to perform, so that a deputy who is in charge of a polling booth where large numbers of votes are cast will receive a much larger fee than one who is given charge of an outlying place where, in all likelihood, not half-a-dozen voters will exercise the franchise. The result of bad pay is always bad service, and the blunders now under comment are proof positivt that the poor remuneration given to Deputy Returning Officers is largely answerable therefor. The recent recounts have proved the utter unfitness of many of the Deputy Returning Officers? for the position, and given rise to a growing impression that some of the so-called " miscounts " were intentional. If they were not some of them looked uncommonly like it, and proved conclusively that a few dishonest or corrupt deputies could in any electorate thwart the intentions of the majority of the voters therein, if no scrutiny were demanded.