The Press Junior THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 1938. The Elections

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22513, 22 September 1938, Page 4 (Supplement)

The Press Junior THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 1938. The Elections

In October .the elections for the twenty-sixth New Zealand Parliament will be-held in the 76 European and four Maori elec-' torates; into which the country is divided. At that .election it win be decided whether or not the first Labour Government in this Dominion is to hold office for a further . term. In some electorates there will be two candidates; in- some' there will'be more. But probably there will not anywhere be as many as six candidates as there were in one electorate for the 1935 elections. During the next few weeks candidates will hold meetings to put their views before the electors. For Europeans' the, method of voting has not changed. All men and women of 21 years of age who are not aliens or criminals or insane persons have the right and the duty to vote; they vote by secret ballot—the secrecy of the ballot is broken only in the case of a legal inquiry after the elections; a comer of the voting paper is turned down and sealed over a number which is repeated in the roll opposite the elector’s name—their procedure is to strike out the names of those candidates fbr whom , they do not wish to vote. No other mark of any kind" may be put upon the paper. Until this year the method of voting in the Maori electorates was different: a Maori elector had to declare himself, in answer to certain questions, 21 years of age and qualified to vote. Then he made his vote orally to the returning officer.’ During last year an amendment was enacted' to' change this; now Maori voters, unless they are blind or unable to. read or write—in which case special provision is made—declare their answers to questions that are necessary, jas there is no Maori roily and then, in secrecy, strike out the names of candidates for whom they do not wish to vote, and put the ballot paper, folded,, into the ballot box. As there is no Maori roll there is no way of telling what percentage of those Maoris qualified to vote exercise their right and duty; but of the Europeans qualified only about 80 per cent, take part in the elections each year. The New Zealand Parliament is elected for a period of three years, on the principle of universal suffrage; that is, it is . intended to be a representative government. In a country such as this the people have a duty to vote so that the government may be in fact what it claims to be— a democratic ‘government, given its power by the vote of the people.