MISSING BALLOT-PAPER.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 12701, 9 March 1904, Page 2

MISSING BALLOT-PAPER.

[press association.] AUCKLAND, Tuesday. The Kev. F. \V. Isitt, speaking at the Prohibition Conference, explained that he had found that there was an idea right through the colony that he had instigated some one to get him a ballot-paper. The facts were that 33 days after the local option poll of 1902, while passing through Cbrikchurch, be met the Rev. E. Walker, who told him that returning officers bad printed on the top of ballot-papers lines that ought not to be there. He was asked by Mr Walker to put out circulars asking returning officers to send him samples of old papers. As soon as the first circular was sent out a reply was received from a returning officer stating that to do what was requested was illegal. In response to the circulars three old papers were received. When he learned that it was illegal for returning officers to send old ballotpapers he at once posted them back to the senders. That was all the instigation he had been guilty of. The ballot-paper which the Minister for Justice was making a row about was brought by a man that be (Mr Isitt) had known f«r 20 years. Had he given that man’s name away it would have ruined him in business. Therefore he did not mention the man’s name. It was ridiculous for Mr M’Gowan to say that be (Mr Isitt) had institgated that man to get that ballot-paper. The culpability was on the part of the man who left the ballotpapers in a box in which was the key, and in a room of which the windows were not locked.