ENROLMENT OF ELECTORS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 18247, 14 November 1922, Page 8

ENROLMENT OF ELECTORS.

ROLLS CLOSE ON THURSDAY. MANY OBJECTIONS RECEIVED Information regarding the nomination of candidates and enrolment of electors for the forthcoming general election has been received by the electoral inspector, Mr. J. Hay, from the Chief Electoral Office, at Wellington. The" writs will be issued in Wellington on Thursday, and at 6 p.m. the same day the second supplementary roll will be cloeed. This means that electors whose names do not yet appear on any of the electoral rolls now only have until Thursday to rectify the omission. All electoral offices will remain open until 6 p.m. on Thursday for this purpose, and post office boxes will be finally cleared at that time. Applications received -after 6 p.m. will be regarded as invalid. Nominations erf candidates will close on Monday, November 27, the tenth, day before polling day. Forms must be signed by at least two electors of the district for which the candidate proposes to stand, and the stipulated consent of the candidate himself to nomination is required. A deposit of £10 must be handed to the returning officer at the time of the nomination. . The election will be held on Thursday, December 7. It will be the second general election in New Zealand at which women have possessed equal qualifications with men for becoming members of Parliament.

The writs, bearing the names of the successful candidates, must be returned by Thursday, December 14, seven' days after the election.

The inclusion of a licensing poll with the general election issues is responsible for a huge number of objections to the appearance of certain persona' names on the rolls. In the Auckland East electorate, for instance, no fewer than 600 objections have been lodged with the returning officer. The great majority of these are compiled in fists drawn up by the respective interests in the licensing poll. More than 50 per cent, of such objections prove, after due investigation, to be unwarranted. The principal ground for objection is that the persons named do not now reside in the electoral' district under which their name appears on the roll, but in a large number of these cases it is revealed that such persons 'have changed their place of residence to anpther locality in the same electorate, and in many cases the returning officer has already been notified by thei persons themselves of their new abode. In a district such as Auckland East, where boarding houses are numerous, the practice of people changing their place of residence to other localities in the same vicinity is a fairly common one.

In certain instances objections to tho names of women appearing on the-rolls are accounted for by the fact that, the ladies concerned have only recently been married, and are consequently not now known by their maiden names. In the case of each objection, the returning officer forwards through the post tO ( the person named a formal objection with a printed form for reply, if this' form is not filled in and returned, after full inquiries have been made by the postal officials in the district concerned, it is presumed that the elector has left the district, and his name is thereupon struck off the roll. In many instances the reply comes back, "Still at same address," or " Still reside in district/' with a change of address appended. The officials in the Waitemata electoral office, after sending the usual fprm to a resident against whom an objection had been laid on the ground that ho was not now residing in the district, wer* astonished to receive the following prompt reply: " Lived in district for 29 years, and still reside here."