MAORI ELECTIONS

Southland Times, Issue 21576, 14 December 1931, Page 7

MAORI ELECTIONS

VOTING SYSTEM ATTACKED. REVISION SUGGESTED. A petition is shortly to be drawn up for presentation to Parliament asking for revision of the system under which the Maori elections are conducted. Messrs Te A. Pitama and Henare Pohio, prominent Maoris, who were also nominators of Mr E. T. Tirikatene, the Independent candidate for Southern Maori, attacked the system in an interview with the Christchurch Times. “We believe that the time has come for a revision of the system of voting at Maori elections. The present form is a relic of the dim and almost forgotten past,” said Mr Pitama. “We are more or less treated as children in the system of voting.” He explained that there was no secrecy of the ballot. The returning officer and his Maori associate asked the voters their names and clans, read out the names of the candidates and asked them for whom they voted, filling in papers accordingly. “The law now states that half-castes and those more than half-castes are eligible to vote,” he continued. “There is no record kept of those who are entitled to vote, with the result that it is possible for quarter-castes or even an individual under age to go in and cast his vote.” At least 95 per cent, of the Maori population in the South Island, could read and write, Mr Pitama continued. A change in electoral systems was vitally necessary, and the Maoris as an educated people were entitled to it. To show how education had advanced among Maoris, Mr Pitama pointed out that the standard for teachers in Native schools was now as high as that demanded of teachers' in pakeha schools. As a result of the loose system of voting, people who should have voted as pakehas had recorded their votes as Maoris, he declared, and in consequence there was considerable dissatisfaction-