WHO ABE QUALIFIED TO VOTE?

Press, Volume LX, Issue 11487, 21 January 1903, Page 6

WHO ABE QUALIFIED TO VOTE?

Apparently a good deal of uncertainty exists with regard to the qualifications requisite for voting on the two matters to be decided! to-morrow—the Greater Chri«tchurcb. question and the election, of the Tramway Board. In, some quarters !t seems to be thought ill at ratepayers only may vote, in others that the roll used is the Parliamentary roll, by which every malt and woman of the age of twenty-one is entitled to vote. Neither of these suppositions (is correct. The Municipal Corporations Act of ISOO, under which the poll on Greater Christohure'h will be taken, provides for a. "district electors'" roll, for which there are three qualifications. An elector, who may be either male or female, must be of the full age of twenty-one before the right to vote can be claimed. To be registered' on the roll under the freehold qualification, and he o* she must be the owner of a freehold estate in land of the capital value of not less than £25 in the ward or borough to whidi the district electors' list relates. The rating qualification requires that tie elector be "the per- " eon whose name appears for the t'lme " being in the 'occupiers' cohimn in the " rate book in respect of any rateable pro- " perty in the ward, -or individual borough "to which the list relates." The third qualification is a reskferiial one. Th* elector, male or female, must have occupied for at least tihree months before the date of the poll, as "tenant or sub-tenant, "or as one of several tenants or sub- " tenants, holding in joint tenancy or ten"ancy in common," the whole or acy portion of any building in the ward or borough at a rent "which is at the rate of not less " than £10 per year for tine tenant or sub- " tenant, cr, as the case may be, for each "of tlie several tenants or sub-tenants." It is further provided that if any tenant or sub-ten&nt sublets all or a portion of his premises, the rent he puye is to be reduced, no far as it affects ais voting qualification, by ftte rent he receives. The roll for the election of the Tramway Board, known as the Christchurch Tramway District Electoral Roll, contains practically the same provisions as regarde electors' qualifications, the differences being merely verbal ones necessitated by the area in which the election takes place I being divided into districts. In both cases, as already mentioned, the qualifications apply equally well to women as to men, and in the caee of husband onds-wife, any I (jpaiificatioa y«Mes*ed bj eittax i>

possessed by each. In view of tj* '■ portance of the issue at stake it j* undesirable that every one who k quarto* ; shall vote so on both questions. - home e'.ectois do not count one way or th» ' other on either question, the majority n. quired to carry the Greater proposal and to determine the Truawj Board election being " a majority of y,, ~ valid votes cast at the poll." J