FOR PACIFIC FORCES

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 87, Issue 219, 16 September 1943, Page 6

FOR PACIFIC FORCES

VOTING ARRANGEMENTS (Official War Correspondent— N.Z.E.F.) New Caledonia, Sept. 10. Results of the general election voting by all New Zealand members of the armed forces in the Pacific should be in the hands of the chief electoral officer in Wellington by the time polling in the Dominion ceases on September 25. Zero hour for recording service votes overseas in this area is 7 p.m., local time, on September 24, after which results will be collated at certain centralised points and forwarded to New Zealand by signal. Many thousands of New Zealanders will vote overseas at this election, and well over 200 polling assistants, the majority of whom have had previous electoral experience in New Zealand, will handle the Pacific voting. Hundreds of miles will be travelled by mobile polling booths serving isolated detachments. At least 10,000 miles will be covered by a special returning officer, Major G. E. Pollock, by the time he completes his duties. Supplies of all necessary voting material are already at their locations, and election information is being distributed by poster and by promulation in unit orders. The lists of all candidates for all electorates will be available as soon as nominations close, and be posted in the camps and polling booths on the days of voting.

For the guidance of voters and polling clerks the rolls of all members of services showing their last

residential addresses and containing electorates have been prepared, and every person applying for a ballot paper will be checked on the roll and be required to produce his pay-book, which will be endorsed as a ballot paper is issued. Votes by declaration may be made by service personnel having no pay-books who claim that the address shown on the rolls is now inaccurate or whose names do not appear on the rolls at all because of their having left New Zealand only recently.

Special ballot papers on which a voter will write the name of the candidate for whom he wishes to vote are being provided. Each paper contains a space for the insertion of the electoral district to which the vote is a p pl i cable.