Electoral Reform.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 50, 11 December 1902, Page 18

Electoral Reform.

Independently of this or that issue, it has become evident that the time is ripe for a drastic measure of electoral reform. The very liberality of the law leads to abuses and multiplies the possibility of error. In the first place, the Government in its laudable anxiety that no one shall be denied electoral privileges, spends large sums in enrolling all whose names are not on the roll. Then the candidates and their friends get to work, and enrol them over again, while the various factions also send out their scouts and possibly enrol them the third time. Then the roll is more or less imperfectly purged, and the election proceeds. As if to still further complicate matters, the licensing poll takes place on the same day, but is governed by the Local Elections Act. A public half holiday is proclaimed. The polling booths are congested for several hours in the afternoon and the officials who are responsible for the election invariably commit minor irregularities which may form the subject of an election petition. Such petitions are the order of the day all over the Colony where the figures have been close—in some cases even where the result has been decisive. Again, the method of recording the voter's decision is bad. It has been argued that the striking out of a name or a proposal to which the voter is opposed is a natural process, which causes the elector no difficulty. The large number of informal papers rejected at every election tells a different tale. The South Australian system is much better. There the voter makes a cross against the person or proposal he desires to vote for, and places hia mark in a little blank square placed there for that purpose. All these features might be improved upon. The method of enrolment is especially loose. The method should be automatic. Every person on attaining the age of 21 years or on attaining the right to the franchise in any way should be enrolled as a matter of course. The electoral franchise should be the basis of all civil rights. It should be to the citizen what the miner's right is to the miner, and should be the passport to the polling booth for the election of all public bodies. This might involve the creation of an electoral department and so afford a peg to hang a complaint on that the object was to find billets for Government supporters.