The Evening Herald. TUESDAY, MARCH 7, 1871.

Wanganui Herald, Volume IV, Issue 1110, 7 March 1871, Page 2

The Evening Herald. TUESDAY, MARCH 7, 1871.

The -system of voting by ballot which has been adopted in this Colony is being questioned by many in point of secrecy. The name of the ballot implies .. absolute secrecy, and if this is open to doubt the principal object of the baßot must be frustrated. On every elector's voting paper his number on the electoral roR is marked. This is done under the provisions of the Representation Act to prevent fraud. It is quite possible it may accomplish the object, but in doing so it is obvious it loses in that absolute secrecy which is demanded; for there is nothing to prevent the Returning Officer and his assistant from ascertaining how a certain person voted; .while the papers which are not destroyed' may be mislaid or stolen, and the whole secret of the way the electors voted become known. Hero is a serious objection to the ballot as it is administered iv the Colony; "but we admit that the question is one which presents many difficulties. Tho known corruption and malpractices iv the United States have afforded valuable experience, and it is generally considered better to prevent- fraud at the expense of secrecy than to secure secrecy but permit the possibility of fraud. The ballot is now in operation at homo, and machinery has come to the rescue. The difficulty of combining secrecy mth an inability to commit fraud has been overcome by a very ingenious contrivance, of which the following is a description abbreviated from an English paper :—Each voter is supplied with as many baUot balls as he has votes, and enters alone the room in which he deposits the balls, the door by which he enters being firmly closed till he makes his exit by another door, which latter door opens outwards only. As he enters tho room tho calculatiug dial, which registers the number of voters^ scores one. He puts his ballot ball or balls into the mouth of the tubes labelled with the names of the candidate or candidates, as the case may be, for whom he desires to vote, or, if he pleases, he puts one or all the balls into another box, labelled "Nobody,'" and as he does so, a wheel working beneath each tube is turned by the fall of tho ballot ball, and one additional vote is scored on the index of the candidate or no-candidate for whom it is given. Should the voter attempt to chop all the balls in one tube or take other balls with him to do so with, Ins attempt is at once frustrated, for the first ball as it falls turns the wheel one eighth of a revolution, when it is stopped by a catch, and the second and aR subsequent balls roR over the wheel into a waste pipe, scoring as it does;'--so..'..the attempted fraud of tho voter. As the waste pipe index, unlike the indices of the candidate, is open to view, the fraudulent, voter may, if it be thought advisable, be arrested as he leaves the voting room. It might, however, happen that a man might drop an extra baU into the tube through nervousness or carlessness, and with no desire to commit a fraud, and therefore, we believe, no action is proposed to be

taken, except in cases whore a private supply of balls had been taken in with Mm by the voter. As the voter leaves the room by the exit door, the latter is so arranged as to restore, as it turns, all the wheels to their primitive position, in .Avhich they will register at once the next, elector's votes. The legislature will probably be asked to consider the question of the secrecy of the ballot next session, and the apparatus described might enable it£fco solve the problem. The Colony is nearly [unanimous that the ballot should bo effective, and that no loophole should be permitted to exist by which the knowledge of how any man voted might come out. The secrecy of the ballot ought to be a reality, or it will be productive of greater evils than the old system of open voting.