THE LAW'S DELAYS

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2452, 4 May 1915, Page 9

THE LAW'S DELAYS

-4 CUMBERSOME ELECTION RITES NEED FOR A CHANGE

system of voting as practised on Wednesday would bo impossible." That is what the Town Clork (Mr. Jno. R. Palmor) thinks of tho system which appears to have been laboriously involved not to simplify the work, but to make it as arduous for the officials as possible. a Mr' Vim J l ™.! 1 ® ° pinion " "ontinued Mr. I aimer, the system is all wrong' rt° ro ° vor V s not a one. Under the present system whore there is K ®fP ICIOII of dual voting the identity of a paper and tlie way the-man voted could be learned by 'the clerks employed. The fact that Lfarenofc r tUrn a - paper ovor is not much protection against a man lookina who wants to find out anything 8 Now the method of voting is onm. paratively simple and quite safe in Svdycars Thprn fh for fifteen years. Ihere the election of a council u taken on the ward system, and half a dozon booths are provided all in the one position in each ward. Those booths aro lettered A to D, E to ff ana so on so that even when there is a Tush tlie crowd automatically sorts itself out alphabetically. Before, howhwi, ]if y r , tllo ' "iterior of tie booth the eloctors have been stopped by the poll clerk, who fills i n 'the names and numbers on the roll of the electors, and gets them to sign the ortL 5 Practically does the work who t™ £ • m - our booths hnt «+ glve P^P' o tielr numbers, work- nf S \ m ° • tuae J 4 relieve s, the work of the returning officer. The eleo. tor hands the paper to that official, who at once calls out the name and num. ber to the check clerks. As soon^g -S 7 er^ aU T. the Returning Officer initials the back of a ballot paper, and hands it to the elector r v U ' eS i bdli ? d a soreett a nd ifr j? ls J ote > drops it into the box (according to the letter of his surname) and leaves the booth. J + ," C^ par « that process with what the Returning Officer of a polling place has to do in Wellington. He las Wlte the number of the elector, gum sSmn > 9 C °-I? er of i h ? P a P er > then stamp it with an official stamp. When J® fe fiv ® issues to deal with, .as on Wednesday, he has to do this five tunes. whereas in. Sydney, the ballot papers would be simply initialled. In i\ew Zealand one can always identify, "1, S y dne rthat is impossible, wn ?il i - 6 difference between a ballot that is secret and one that is not.

Thai what takes place after the booth closes? A few mjnutes before that time a cab or taxi draws up at the tooth door and the booth closed, the Returning Officer and his cWks with the ballot boxes Btep in, Mid axe whirled down to the Town Hall. There m the big hall tables are allotted to the staff of each booth, and there the count goes on under the eye of the Chief Returning Officer. If there is a doubt about the validity of a paper, the Chief Returning Officer's 16_ caught, he examines the paper, and either says 'Allow 1' or 'Disallow!' as the case may be, and the thing is settled. It. is seldom later than 10 o clock before everything is cleared np in Sydney. At what time would we have known the results of this week's elections had we Sydney's population?"

The Chief Returning Officer's Views. Mr. James Ames (the Chief Returning Officer) has little to say about the process of voting, but he freoly admits that the work to be done after the booths close is .too .much for the time provided for it in the Act (one week). '"If it took up to within two hours of the swearing-in time (a week after the election) last year, when we only, had the Mayoral election to do, how it is possible to deal with the papers of five issues in the time ? It can't be done 1 j This scrutiny of the roll is a long job, ! and has to be carefully done. I hjve .a [ staff of eighteen clerks hard at itj and I know the work cannot be done in a week. We might have been able to do the Mayoral papers by next Wednesday, but you can't swear a Mayor in.without a council for him to preside over, and you can't swear-in your council until I [ have declared them officially elected. What I am doing this time to locate cases of dual voting is a new idea. Formerly wo used to get all the booth rolls and I would sit at the head of the table with a new roll, and take the numbers in rotation as they came, and rule off all who had voted on the master roll. On this ocoasion I thought of a simpler and quicker idea. That was to givo each clerk a booth roll, and let him go through it, writing the number of each elector who voted on a separate slip of paper.' As these are done these slips are sorted into rotatory order, in which process it will be discovered if any person has voted twice. It is a long job», but it is quicker than the old way. lien after we have checked the rolls in this way we have to start again, and count the ballot papers over again in order to get the correct figures. The figures that have been published are > only, rough ones, and are not official by any. means. Here is a mistake of 100 votes iu one card. It does not affect the result, but if the candidate were higher on the list it might have done so. Those figures are really only to let the public know approximately how the voting ■went. In the case of the Parliamentary, elections, some -weeks elapse before they gazette the Tesult, and in such _ cases there are only two or three candidates for a seat, but here_ we have to deal with 29 for the council, 28 for the Hospital Board, and half-holiday as well. It's a hit of a picnic!"