VOTING BY SOLDIERS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25344, 30 September 1943, Page 4

VOTING BY SOLDIERS

SYSTEM EXPLAINED (P.A.) WELLINGTON, Sept. 29. The chief electoral officer, Mr L. Irwin, made the following statement to-day:—“ Some members of the forces have doubts in regard to the secrecy of the ballot conducted recently, because of the fact that the soldier’s name and regimental number appear on the butt of the ballot paper, a consecutive number appears on the butt and the ballot paper, and the form of declaration is pinned to an envelope containing the vote. Any doubts are immediately dispelled once the system of dealing with the votes is known. “Briefly the position is as follows: The outer envelope is opened and the sealed envelope containing the vote is endorsed with the name of the electorate shown on the declaration form, and the envelope is then placed in the locked ballot box for the particular electorate for which the serviceman voted. The declaration and the sealed vote are entirely disassociated and are not brought together again unless the declaration is found to be incorrect. If this should happen in the presence of scrutineers the vote is set aside as informal. “The declarations are parcelled up, the sealed ballot boxes are opened, the votes extracted, and the envelopes sorted and counted. Should the declaration be inadvertently included in the envelope by the voter, the envelope is opened and the declaration extracted. The envelope is then resealed without reference to the vote, and the same procedure as outlined above is carried out. Scrutineers are present throughout.

“ The sole purpose of the consecutive number is to ensure that, if dual voting occurs, the vote of the elector may be extracted and disallowed. To do this all the butts have to be checked to find the consecutive number, and the ballot papers have to be searched to locate the corresponding number. By law a returning officer is bound to ensure that the faces of ballot papers handled in this way are not seen by any person. A check is made by the returning officer and his staff in the presence of a justice of the peace and scrutineers from all parties.’’ Mr Irwin added that this was the only occasion when butts and ballot papers were referred to, and the law provided heavy penalties for any infringement of secrecy. After the official count all the butts and papers were kept in the custody of the clerk of the House of Representatives for a year and then destroyed.