MR. BIRCH’S PROTEST.

Evening Star, Volume IX, Issue 2522, 17 March 1871, Page 2

MR. BIRCH’S PROTEST.

To John Burnside, Esq., Principal Returning Officer f>>r the Province of Otago.

Sir, The extraordinary discrepancies between the state of the poll of votes for the City of Dunedin, as announced by you on the evening of the 13th iust , and officicially to-day, not on y exhibit an apparent want of care o i your part iu reference to your first examination of the voting papers, but are calculated to raise grave doubts as to whether any reliance can be placed on your final examination of them. Not only myself individually, hut the public generally are deeply interested in securing such an administration of «ur electoral laws as will check any suspicion tkat, either through want of care or otherwise, it is possible for the Ballot Box to be tampered with. Mistakes like those which have recently occurred a-e calculated to raise such suspicions, and 1 therefore beg to inform you that as one of the public—and one, moreover, who feels a personal right to complain of those mistakes—l shall deem it my duty to take such steps as may be necessary to obtain a full inquiry into the cause of the mistakes of which 1 complain, as also a further examination of the voting pipers connected with the recent election for Dunedin, with a view of testing the legality of the returns. I have, &c.

Thomas Birch.