ERRORS OF VOTERS

Taranaki Daily News, 9 December 1931, Page 9

ERRORS OF VOTERS

NUMBERS DISFRANCHISED. CASES IN AUCKLAND EAST. Of 66 votes by declaration made on election day in the Auckland East electorate not one was valid, and at the conclusion of the official count they were included among the 202 informal votes cast in the electorate. Votes by declaration are allowed, says the Herald, when electors whose names are not on the rolls claim the right to jvote through some allefjid fault or omission on the part of the registrar of electors. The majority of the 66 persons who voted by declaration in Auckland East claimed that because they had changed their addresses since the last general election, in 1928, and were now residing in Auckland East, they were entitled to vote. Others claimthat although they were now residing out of the electorate they had only changed their addresses recently and should therefore be entitled to vote in Auckland East.

Inquiry into all these cases resulted in the rejection of all the would-be voters’ claims. In a great many cases it was discovered that the voter vps actually enrolled in some other electorate, so that by casting an informal vote in Auckland East he unwittingly disfranchised himself. The fact that 100 per cent of the persons who thus voted by declaration did so on baseless grounds is probably unique in electoral history. In addition to the 66 informal votes ■by declaration, 44. absentee votes, out of 475 recorded by electors who were away from the electorate on election day, were classed as informal, while the. number of informal postal votes, recorded by persons travelling in other parts of the Dominion, was six out of a total of 88. 'Eight postal votes which were issued by the returning officer were not exercised. An extraordinary feature was that several postal voting papers which were issued at the request of electors in other parts of the country were returned through the post unmarked. They were classed informal.

By contrast with these high percentages of informal votes, every one of the 26 seamen’s rights exercised was valid. The number of informal votes east by persons who voted at the polling booths was 86. The majority were rendered invalid through carelessness or ignorance, as when the voter marked his choice of a candidate by a cross instead of striking out the names of the candidates he did not wish to vote -for, as indicated in the printed instruction on each ballot paper. Some of the ballot papers, however, were rendered null and void with deliberate intent, as was indicated by several papers which were endorsed with the word "Communism."