SERVICE TO BE CABLED

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 87, Issue 202, 27 August 1943, Page 4

SERVICE TO BE CABLED

MIDDLE EAST FACILITIES (Special Correspondent—N.Z.P.A.) Cairo, Aug. 23. . As part of the world-wide organisation to record the votes of New’ Zealand men and women serving overseas, a special returning officer and his staff have arrived from the Dominion and arc completing arrangements with our Middle East forces for the General Election next month. Already their office is established in the Second N.Z.E.F.’s Middle East base, and they are working to make known the conditions of the election and polling arrangements to New’ Zealanders in the three Services everywhere between Syria and Egypt and across Africa from the Red Sea to the Atlantic. Voting in the middle East will take place over a fortnight, ending at 7 o’clock Cairo time on September 24, so that results from here will be known in New Zealand on election day. The results of the preliminary count will be cabled to New Zealand on September 25, and later, from a final 7*hqpk on all the voting papers, official figures will be sent. '’Although there still sections scattered over hundreds of miles between the Syrian border and Tripolitania the contacting of N.Z.E.F. units is not a great problem for the returning officer. Now more than ever previously in the last two years, our Army units in the Middle East are gathered in reasonably small areas where polling arrangements can be made easily. Far more difficult is the problem of reaching New’ Zealanders on isolated R.A.F. stations and New Zealand sailors who are likely to appear for probably only a few hours at any Mediterranean port. Through the widely-distributed Army newspaper, the N.Z.E.F. Times, by posters, radio messages, and special orders, every effort is being made to reach as many as possible of these men. One of the many requests for voting facilities which arrived to-day was from a New Zealand pilot who said he would be ferrying aircraft anywhere betw’een tne United States and Egypt before election day. It is expected that almost all the preliminary arrangements for the voting' period will he complete within the next few days.

VOTING FACILITIES ABROAD

(Special Correspondent—N.Z.P.A.) London, Aug. 24. Lists of New Zealanders in the forces throughout Britain who intend to vote at the General Election are now* coming in “satisfactorily” to NewZealand House, states Mr. F. T. Sandford. Members of the Merchant Navy over the age of 21 have also been informed that there will be facilities for them to vote. New Zealanders in Gibraltar, Iceland, and Greenland will also cast their votes through the London organ- i isation. It is doubtful whether there are many in Greenland, but there are certainly several in Iceland and Gibraltar. Nominations are expected in London on September 9, and voting will begin immediately.