OLD-TIME ELECTION.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20870, 12 May 1931, Page 9

OLD-TIME ELECTION.

FIRST WELLINGTON COUNCIL, WHEN PEOPLE PAID TO VOTE. There is in the town clerk's office in Wellington a book with rich red binding with gilt lettering that looks essentially modern, but a glimpse at its mellowed pages shows that it is the first municipal roll of the city of Wellington in 1842. Mould has eaten through many of the pages, the ink has yellowed with the years, and indeed a great deal of -the beautifully neat writing is indecipherable, but the book is interesting never, theless, says the Evening Post, and discloses how differently they did things in those far-off days. Then it was not a case of everybody —with a few painful exceptions—having a vote. Far from it. Only those who paid their pound, probably in thoss days in good r ?d gold, were allowed a vote. There' was' no fear that, the p<ilitipal "flapper"* would vote for the prettiest photograph, and there was 110 such thing as secrecy about the way one voted. The book is a plain record to-day for all to read how the votes were polled. Across the head of the page are the names of the candidates, 37 of them, each with his little column to the foot of the page, and opposite the name every "financial" citizen the votes are cast in th® columns to which they belong, lika a schoolmaster 'marking his attendance sheet, but not so regularly. This takes a double page. The first column, with the electors in alphabetical order, contains many names which have left their. mark on the city. It is seen that 352 of them paid their £l. The purging cf this roll was very automatic, synchronising with its compilation. Occupations that would appear quaint on the city roll to-day are those of innkeeper, settler, sawyer, wheelwright, ropemaker, weaver, grasskeeper, tinman, herdsman, servant, farm overseer, rier, shingler (not of hair), ?nd cordwainer, while somo of the places they lived at would be hard to find to-daj, by their original names. The roll was printed, but the voting is filled in by pen, and 'duly attested.llow careful must voters then havo been as to who they voted for, and h0%7 plain the motives which actuated th® 352 voters, as compared with the complexities of tickets and municipal politics of to-day's 50,258 voters! One curious error appears in tho vollow figures, where Mr. George Hunter's total at the top of the. page is carried forward 100 votes too many, but this error obviously bowled itself out, because at the top of (he page lie had 343 votes, and would have had 373 at the bottom, whereas there were only 352 paid tip voters. It was evidently not thought worth correcting.