The Otautau Standard AND WALLACE COUNTY CHRONICLE Tuesday, December 26th, 1905. A NECESSARY CONFERENCE.

Otautau Standard and Wallace County Chronicle, Volume I, Issue 35, 26 December 1905, Page 2

The Otautau Standard AND WALLACE COUNTY CHRONICLE Tuesday, December 26th, 1905. A NECESSARY CONFERENCE.

The recent parliamentary election has neoessarily brought a large body of men, who have been acting as Deputy Returning Officers, into intimate and close acquaintance with the provisions of the Electoral Act, „ and one is impressed with the stringent conditions attached to the duties of Returning Officers. The conditions imposed are becoming increasingly onerous, and that officer is hedged jn with, so many legal difficulties, and confronted with penalties and impositions as to make the office difficult of fulfilment, and calling for great judgment, tact, accuracy, and ability. When account is taken of the immense issues that are at stake at each general election, the necessity for Returning Officers having a thorough knowledge and extensive grasp of the duties imposed upon them becomes apparent. The difficulties and traps besetting the Licensing Poll alone are such as" to demand that the work can only be entrusted to officers of considerably more than average intellectual, and organising capacity. To ensure that the wishes of the Legislature that every elector h$ given the greatest facility possible for recording his vote, and, that having recorded it, no leakage or miscarriage shall subsequently take place, calls for the preparation and adoption of the most minute, and at the same time, most simple instructions for the conduct of he poll, Many of the forms now supplied want re-modelling, and a recast is also necessary of the equipment supplied to each booth, the present one being imperfect and incomplete. To ensure the greatest accuracy we would suggest that the Cabinet might consider the desireability of convening a Conference of all the Returning Officers engaged at the recent election, and while all the various, difficulties and imperfections which have had to be faced are fresh m their memory a code for future conduct would be drawn up that would greatly facilitate . the carrying out Of the General Election work, and that would lessen very materially the |likelihood of future mistakes. There are some 75 Returning Officers m the colony, and the small expense that would be incurred would be infiintismal when the good that would result is considered. The proposal is well worthy of enterr tainrnent by those m authority.