ELECTORAL ENROLMENTS

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 28 March 1925, Page 4

ELECTORAL ENROLMENTS

It is officially estimated that ninetyfive per cent, of those persons entitled to become Parliamentary electors in Nerv Zealand have now enrolled under the compulsory provision,s of the new law. Actually, 704,443 have registered, whereas at the last general election, there were 700,111 names - on the roll and 620,650 persons voted. This position is somewhat more satisfactory than it might have been,, and the Act may now- he held to have justified itself. At first glance the total of registrations does not appear to mark any improvement on the old rolls, for there can be little doubt that the adult population of the Dominion has increased by more than four thousand in the past two years. But it has to he remembered that every one of the new registrations is “live.” The same could not be said of the old rolls, which in some cases," were badly in. need of purging. Then,* again., no immigrant who has landed in the past twelve. months is yet eligible for enrolment, and there must be .several hundreds,of voters within the country newly settled in their present electorates, and not yet free to. hand in their names. If, when, the general roll for next election has closed, the total registrations are found to have increased by either one or two per cent., that is perhaps the utmost that can be expected. Some people have conscientious objections to voting, and possibly also to enrolling, and there are bound to he odd stragglers who just won’t bother. The principle, at compulsory enrolment is difficult to justify-—it should not require the •threat of prosecution to make us takeadvantage of our privileges,—but • from the present effort New Zealand will have 'secured clean, rolls, which - i-‘-something to he thankful' for. lal.ing the electorates individually, .in practically half of them—thirty-seven of the total seventy-six—the registre tiows fall below' the total of names <.n the old rolls; but in six only—Bay of Islands, Tanranga,, Gisborne, Havye’s Bay, On.maru, and Wallace —are- the enrolments short of the actual number of voters in 1922. Incidentally."there is this disquieting feature: that, for the .most part, urban and suburban electorates show' a much greater increase of numbers than do the country districts.