INTERFERING WITH VOTERS

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2359, 15 January 1915, Page 6

INTERFERING WITH VOTERS

A CASE IN COURT. (By Telegraph—Press Association 1 Auckland, January 14. People who don't know how to vote are liable to .get • their friends into' trouble on polling day. An instance of this occurred last election day which resulted in Harold K. Simpson, licensee of the Alexandra Hotel, being charged before Mr. E. C. Outten, S.M., this morning that at the Sailors' Mission Hall polling booth on election day he interfered with a voter by advising her how to vote. .' '. ' . Defendant did not appear, and Senior-Sergeant stated, that when, defendant was driving , a motorcar down Hobson Street on election day he noticed an old woman standing at a window. Ho beckoned to her ana oventually went to the louse and took her in the car to the Mission Hall polling booth. As he".and she got out of the car he instructed her that she -would get tWo voting;-papers and that she was to strike oiit the bottom line' on each paper. A number'of people heard him, ana some of them remonstrated with him. His Worship said had the evidence eon© in the direction of shoeing that defendant was making a custom of interfering with voters he would _ have been heavily fined, but the evidence showed that the' -woman was very old and could neither read nor write. It was possible in such circumstances that defendant might have known the voter's desire and was trying to make clear to her how to give effect to her desire. Still anybody with any sense should know that he had no right to interfere with a voter oi\to offer advice on voting day, even if the other person had been deaf ,dumb, and blind. . The defendant would be-convicted and fined £2 and £1 lis. costs.