THE ABSENT VOTER.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 19170, 9 November 1925, Page 11

THE ABSENT VOTER.

PROCEDURE TOO COMPLEX. MANY INFORMALITIES SHOWN. CHANGES IN LAW NEEDED, Returning officers everywhere are busily engaged in checking the rolls preparatory to the official count,, which has itself been started in some instances. The writs for the Parliamentary election are returnable in Wellington on Thursday, so that in the ordinary event tho count will have to be completed, so far as Auckland is concerned, before tho express trains leave on Wednesday. However tho returning officers are meeting so much trouble with absent votes that possibly an extension of time will have to be asked for. There is no time-limit for the licensing poll, the papers in which will not be counted until the electoral count is complete. It seems cloar that the new system of absent voting without permits is far too elaborate and has been widely abused. In this election absent votes have totalled 300 or 400 for each electorate instead of 50 or so. That is natural, considering that the residential qualification is now three months, and that the absent voting privilege has been used to prevent the disfranchisement of people who, having registered, had moved to another electorate within three months of the poll. The abuse consisted in invoking the privilege to avoid a short journey to the voter's own electorate. For example, on polling day many people who had their daily "work in Auckland Central insisted on voting as absent voters at the Town Hall concert, chamber, and declined to travel as far as Parnell or Roskill, where their names were registered. The deputy returning officers had no power to turn them away and persuasion was useless. Strangely enough, most of such obstinate people persisted, although they had to wait as long in a queue as they would have occupied on the journey. It is plain that the law will have to be amended by setting a limit of distance or making some other restriction.

What troubles the returning officers now | is that a large proportion of the votes | arriving by post are out of order. One | officer on whom a reporter called on Saturday was found supervising his staff as they laid out votes on the office floor in batches according to the various informalities the papers presented. There was, apparently, any amount of room for error on the part of hurried deputies. The regulations provide that the elector must fill in and sign a form of application to vote. A voting paper is then made out for him, the names of the candidates being written in, and he is also provided with a licensing ballot paper. When he has voted each paper is sealed up in an envelope and the two envelopes are placed in a third, together with the application to vote and the counterfoils of the voting papers. The packet is posted to the returning office of tho district where the vote is to ba exercised. The deputy is also required to send a telegram to the same returning officer, stating that "John Srjiith, plumber, 20, Main Street," has voted. On receiving the vote the returning officer must send the form of application to the registrar of electors, in order that tho voter's signature thereon may bo checked with that upon his application for registration. If they tally, and everything else is in order, the inner envelopes are opened and the votes are recorded. Owing to the rush of absent voters and the complex procedure, there have been many errors, 011 the part of voters as woll as officials. Some of tho returning officers believe that next time the old system of permits will have to bo brought in again. As it is, a number of electors are likely to have their votes rejected as informal.