ABSENTEE VOTING PAPERS.

Shannon News, 6 November 1925, Page 2

ABSENTEE VOTING PAPERS.

CAUSE MUCH TROUBLE. The recent simplification of the method of voting by absentees is very unfavourably commented upon by deputy returning officers in various parts of the Dominion. The idea underlying tiie innovation? was undoubtedly commendable, but unfortunately it was abused to an extent that was almost intolerable in many cases. Under the provisions of Section 13 of the Legislature Act, introduced in 1924, any registered elector may now at any time wilhin the hours of polling vote as an absentee voter outside’ his own particular district. It is po longer necessary to apply for an absentee voter’s permit as was the case at previous elections. The procedure to be followed, however, entails much work on the deputy returning officers. First, they mulst ask for the elector’s full name, and his place of residence and occupation as appearing on the electoral roll of the district in which, he is registered. Then if the officer is satisfied that the claimant is entitled to vote as an absentee voter he asks him; to make- application oil the prescribed, form. The officer then has to ascertain from the schedule 1 lie names of the candidates for the district for which the elector is entitled to vote arid has to write them oir a blank ballot paper, which must be detached from the counterfoil and handed to the voter together with the voting paper for the licensing poll, and in the case of nolicense districts the voting paper for the local licensing poll. A,t Shannon a double staff of two deputies with a poll clerk was assigned for this department, and were only given a section of the ordinary polling, but there was such a rush of “absentees’’ that they had very early in the day to devote themselves entirely to the special work to keep pace with the complicated procedure demanded by the regulations. In many cases the absentees were voters from neighbouring electorates, who preferred toi vote at other centres and probabiy passed one or. two polling booths in their own electorate on their way to Shannon. The aim of the Section was not to provide facilities for tlial sort of centralisation, but rather to make it easier for the “bona fide traveller,” and the opinion was formed by many deputies that some notice of intention to vote' away from one’s own town should be required. Similar comment wa§ passed inmany other electorates. “Tins new absentee system is giv•ing more trouble than it is worth,” said one deputy to a representative of the Christchurch Star on election clay. “We have had about twenty people in between 9 a.m. and noon, and still they are coining. Men enrolled in the next electorate have availed themselves of the privilege, and I assure you it is giving us a tot of unnecessary trouble. I can’t see how the returns are going to be got through by to-night. This new system complicates matters to such an extent that we hardly know where we are.

“Tilings have never been like this in previous years; our work is being continually held up by people inquiring how the forms are to he filled in, what is to be done with them when they are filled in, and so on. Then there is the complicated system that has to he followed when the forms are received. I tell you I have had enough of this new system to do me for a lifetime.” Another deputy stated' that he had had so many applications for absentee permits before 10 o’clock that be decided to refuse to give them except in what he was satisfied were genuine cases. “People have been making a convenience of the new system,” he declared, “but. I have put a stop to it at this booth. I tell them' to go and vote in their own electorate.”