CONTROL BOARD ELECTION.

Waipa Post, Volume XXIV, Issue 1648, 4 June 1925, Page 5

CONTROL BOARD ELECTION.

Sir,—Several outstanding facts regarding this farce in the way of electing members for the Dairy Control Board require the dairy farmers' immediate attention.. In the first place, those responsible for : drawing up the conditions under which 'electors are compelled to register their votes, are either incapable or have deliberately gone out of their way to confuse the electors. Thousands of dairy farmers in this country are so unfortunately placed that they are not in touch with the events of the times.. Through geographical or financial reasons, coupled with a feeling .of apathy and the following of the line of least resistance, farmers cannot and do not always obtain the daily papers and so do not know that certain men whose names appear on the ballot, paper, have withdrawn their candidature for election to the Control Board. The fact of having names on the voting paper of men who are not standing is not only .confusing to the electors, but is unfair to men who are spending their own money and giving their time for the wellbeing of their fellow dairy farmers. Why should men and women, who through an innocent misunderstanding of the position and who will possibly leave names on the voting paper of men who are,not standing, be disfranchised?

Again, this compulsion to vote for two candidates. There are possibly farmers in this country who know of the business ability of only one of the •seven men whose names appear on the ballot paper; then why in the name of reason is he compelled to vote for somebody of whom he knows nothing and cares less? It is purely and simply reducing a business proposition to the worst class of gamble. —I am, etc., P. MURTAGH.