EXPERIMENTAL REGULATIONS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 11642, 2 May 1901, Page 4

EXPERIMENTAL REGULATIONS.

Our neighbours of New South Wales have distinguished" themselves. For reasons which evidently were convincing to them, they decided that every voter must vote for six Senatorial candidates in the Federal elections, six being the number of seats to which each colony is entitled. Voting for any number but exactly six made the ballot-paper informal. ■ The result will probably live in political annals as the record of how-not-to-do-I it: Total voters 220.573 Formal 181,899 Informal 38,674 The New South Wales voter, to the extent of 17.53 per cent., either failed to keep correct tally of those he was checking off, or trusted mistakenly to his right as a Briton to vote for as few as he pleased. But still more strange was the confusion into which the dizziness of much counting landed the compilers of the official return. They added the number of voting papers to the six votes lost by each informal paper, and thus worked out- an informal voting of 21.27 per cent. As every other State followed the usual British custom of allowing any num- ! ber not exceeding six to bo voted for, with corresponding increase of proportionate formality, it would be interesting to know what inspired the New South "Wales authorities in the making of this experimental regulation. Possibly the desire of the rival fiscal parties to secure a straight party cleavage for the purpose of testing their strength mayhave induced the experiment, or possibly a desire to limit Senatorial selection to those who could count up to six correctly, a feat which at a single glance can only be performed by the mathematical genius. But whatever the reason, the method is hardly likely to be repeated seeing that- even in the mostintelligent district 13 per cent, of the voters were thus disfranchised. The most informal district lost 22 per cent. It is hardly necessary to add that most of the defeated candidates have a splendid explanation as to why they failed to reach the Senate,