TO-DAY'S POLLING

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2329, 10 December 1914, Page 6

TO-DAY'S POLLING

METHODS OF VOTING

POINTS THAT ELECTORS SHOULD NOTE

To-day the electors of the Dominion are called upon to elect Parliamentary representatives in the seventy-six European constituencies, and polls will also be taken upon the national and local licensing issues. The hours of polling, are from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., and all electors will be well-advised to vote early. A list of polling-places in the city and adjoining constituencies is printed below. lhe methods ofi voting are so simple that no elector who exercises ordinary Fi?. re -n register an informal vote, lhe Parliamentary voting paper will bear the nanieß of the candidates, and the voter is required to strike out the names of the candidate or candidates for whom he does not wish to vote, leaving untouched only the name of the candidate for ; whom a vote is to be recorded. A ballot-paper on which more than one name is ; leit uncancelled will be rejected as informal.

. Similar methods apply in the licensing polls. In districts where licenses at present exist the ballot-paper in respect of the local issue offers the following alternatives :—

I Vote for Continuance. I Vote for No-License. In No-License areas the local issue is: — I Vote for Local Restoration. I Vote for. Local No-License. In both License and No-License areas the national issue is stated:— v . I Vote for National Continuance. I Vote for National Prohibition. The voting method is in every case the same, the voter being asked to .strike out the alternative for which he does not wish to vote, , leaving untouched tho alternative for which he does wish to vote. > : • One new feature at the present election should be , carefully noted. Hitherto only those electors whose names appear on tho current rolls have been entitled to vote, but as the law now stands any elector whose name appeared on the roll in .1911, if he voted in that year, and is still resident in tho district in which he was then enrolled, is entitled to vote both in the Parliamentary and licensing polls, upon making a declaration before the returning officer, or any deputy-returning officer. A heavy fine is imposed for any fraudulent misuse of this privilege. In addition to the votes polled today the returning officers will have to count an exceptionally large number of votes recorded under special circumstances —under the ' Expeditionary Forces Voting Act. These votes wiil be dealt with as' if they were recorded under absent voters' permits, and the law does not therefore allow of their being handled by the deputy-returning officers in the preliminary count tonight. They can be dealt with only in the official count made by the returning officer after the scrutiny of tho rolls is completed. , The results first declared have rarely been affected in past elections by the official count, but this year the number of votes to be reckoned later will be so large—nearly 12,000 in all —that in close elections it is quite possible that the official count will have added importance. To-night the returning officers will declare the result of the preliminary count ae usual, and will also declare th 6 number of other yotes to ,bo counted later. '.