RAGLAN INQUIRY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26437, 16 April 1947, Page 6

RAGLAN INQUIRY

VOTERS’ STORIES TRANSIENT MODE OF LIVING P.A. HAMILTON. Apl. 15. Evidence as to the eligibility of 15 of the 167 voters challenged by the petitioner was heard by the Electoral Court to-day in the case in which Hallyburton Johnstone, the defeated candidate for Raglan, asks that he be declared elected in place of Allan Cheyne Baxter. In all instances except one, the voters hqd been challenged on the ground that they had not resided in the electorate for three months at the date of the election, and the complexities which the whole hearing involves were typified this afternoon as several witnesses told of their transient mode of living in the months preceding the election. J Force Electors The contention that, although the home of two members of J Force who voted in Japan for Raglan lay outside the Raglan boundaries, the court was precluded from making any ' inquiry into the qualification to vote of a soldier voter, was made by Mr T. P. Cleary for the respondent. Mr Cleary was referring to the voters, John Vivian Phillips and Laurence Joseph Phillips. He based his argument on the section of the Electoral Amendment Act 1940, dealing with voting by soldiers. This section states, inter alia: “The validity of any election shall not be brought in question on the ground that any person who has voted under this Act was not entitled to vote. Unusual circumstances were revealed by the evidence of a former airman, Elmer Nevil McGill, who said he arrived back in New Zealand on October 22 1946, with his wife, Irene McGill, and their two children. They spent a few days with his parents at an address which he now xnew to he in the Hauraki district Then they spent a week with his brother in Frankton Junction and later visited various relatives at different addresses. “At that time I could not say l had a home of my own at all,” said. McGill. When, on October 4 last, he began work he was staying with a sister at her home in the Hamilton electorate, but later spent a week at Ngaruawahia and exercised his vote there. Though he was seeking a home of his own, he did not =ecure one until this month. McGill said he left New Zealand in 1928 and spent 10 years at sea in the merchant service By virtue of his occupation, he claimed to have maintained his New Zealand domicile. Before going to sea he lived and worked at Mercer, in the Raglan electorate. In April, 1939, he left the merchant service because he could see war coming, and volunteered for the air force, which tie joined in 1940. serving until his discharge late in 1945. War Brides McGill said he had not previously been on any electoral roll because he was a minor when he left New Zealand, but he had never voted in England because he had no permanent home there. He and his wife enrolled on October 2 last year. The statement on his wife's declaration that she had resided in New Zealand for one year, which had not been struck out on the card, was incorrect, as was the declaration that she had been three months in the electorate. Before he and his wife enrolled, however, he had telephoned John Cameron Halliday, postmaster at Huntly and returning officer for Raglan at the general election. "Halliday told me that, provided I gave the address of the house in which I was sleeping on the night I made the application it would be sufficient. He said that if I voted in the district in which* I worked before I went away it would be satisfactory,” said McGill. He told the court he believed his wife was entitled, as a war bride, to some concession in regard to registration. Cross-examined by Mr Cleary, McGill said that Halliday had placed more emphasis on the fact that witness, as an ex-serviceman, was entitled under the Electoral Amendment Act of 1940 to exercise his vote “ regardless of declarations or otherwise.” Mr' Cleary: But you did not know that an election petition would result in matters being put under the microscope? McGill said he had understood from Halliday that a serviceman’s wife was entitled to a concession excusing her from the normal residential qualification. Another witness heard during the afternoon was Harold Fairhurst, whose postal vote had been challenged by the petitioner. Fairhurst said he voted in Australia before a justice of the peace with papers forwarded to him by his father. He had applied in 1935 to be enrolled as an elector. The court will resume at 10 a.m. tomorrow.