POSTAL VOTING.

Otago Witness, Issue 3869, 8 May 1928, Page 72

POSTAL VOTING.

REGULATIONS GAZETTED. WELLINGTON, May 1. A supplement to the Gazette, published last night, contains regulations for the procedure to be adopted in regard to postal voting at parliamentary elections. Postal voting can be availed of by the tollowing classes of electors:— Those absent from New Zealand on polling day; those who, throughout the hours of polling on the polling day, will not be within five miles, by the nearest practicable route, of any polling place; 1 those who, throughout the hours of polling on polling day, will be travelling under conditions which will preclude their attendance at any polling place to vote; and those ill or infirm, and who, by reason of such illness or infirmity, will be precluded from attending at any polling place to vote. Lighthouse keepers, their. staffs, and their families, and persons desiring to exercise a postal vote, must make written application to the returning officer of the electoral district in which they are registered, and fill in a prescribed form, giving particulars as to why they cannot attend a polling place on election day. The form is to be signed in the presence of an authorised witness, who inav be a permanent officer in the service of the Government, a registered medical practitioner, a registered nurse, a registered midwife, a registered maternity nurse, an officiating minister under “ The Marriage Act, 1908,” a solicitor, a justice of the peace, or a person appointed in that behalf, either generally or for a particular case or eases by the returnin'* officer . ° No candidate or person employed by a political party or organisation interested in a licensing poll or election shall act as a witness. Postal vote certificates and postal ballot papers may be issued at any time during ordinary office hours after the issue of the writ and before the time prescribed for the close of the poll. 11 the applicant signs by making his mark or with an illiterate signature he on . J 1 * 8 .application for the purpose oi identification, add, following his signa-' ture, any three numerals arbitrarily selected which he intends shall be added to his signature on the postal vote certificate, so as to connect the signature on the application with the signature on the postal vote certificate to be subsequently signed by him. No person shall’sign his name as witness until he has first taken steps to ascertain the veracity of the statements made by the applicant for a postal vote certificate.

If an elector thinks that his application may not in tire ordinary course of post reach the returning officer for the district in which he is -registered as an elector in time to receive back before the election a postal vote certificate and ballot paper he may send the application to some other, returning officer, who shall take steps by telegraph to establish the applicant’s identity and verify his statements. This course having been taken the returning officer for the elector’s district may give authority by teelgraph lor the issue of the necessary papers. An elector to whom a postal vote certificate has been issued shall not be entitled to vote at any polling place unless he first delivers to the deputy returning officer for cancellation his posta'l vote certificate and postal ballot paper. When exercising his postal vote the elector shaall exhibit to an authorised witness his ballot paper (unmarked) and postal vote certificate. The elector is then to sign the postal vote certificate or aflix his mark and selected numerals which he placed for the purpose of identification on his application form, and the witness then to sign his name on the certificate without letting the witness see the vote, but in his presence. The elector shall then write on the ballot paper the name of the candidate for whom he’wishes to vote, and fold it so that it cannot be seen. The ballot paper and postal vote certificate are then to be placed in an envelope addressed to the returning officer of the district in which the elector is registered. If the elector is blind or unable to write, the witness, if required, may mark the elector’s vote on the ballot pafier in accordance with the instruction of the voter. If the elector requires it, the-witness shall allow another person to inspect the ballot paper. A witness must not disclose h’ow an elector exercised his vote. Failure to deliver to the returning officer an envelope containing a postal ballot paper is an offence. All postal ballot-papers and certificates have to reach the returning officers before the poll closes, otherwise they will be rejected as informal. 1 - A paper will not be informal because ofany mistake in the spelling of a candidate’s name. . - If the elector’s intention is otherwise clear when the -.votes have been recorded, the certificates and unopened envelopes containing ballot papers disallowed are to be wrapped up into separate parcels and forwarded with the ordinary ballot papers to the clerk of the House of Representatives. Breaches of the regidations are punish-i able by a fine up to £lOO, or imprison-, ment for 12 months. Votes on the licensing issue may be exercised in a similar manner to that of the election of candidates. The regulations also contain provisions for voting by electors at Chatham Islands, radio-telegraphy being the means of transmitting the results to the returning officer at Lyttelton, and they also specify how absent voters are to apply for permits and record their votes.