THE CHINESE VOTE IN VICTORIA.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 2044, 11 September 1880, Page 3

THE CHINESE VOTE IN VICTORIA.

“ Atticus” in the “Leader” says" Several members of the House are reported to have been indebted to the Celestial vote at the late contest. Kong Meng, in gratitude for having been made an Exhibition Commissioner, helped to distribute circulars written in Chinese denouncing the Liberal party, and used his influence with the same object, so that his countrymen throughout the colony polled to a man wherever 'they could for the party of ‘ law and order.’ They could not in every case pass through the ordeal of an examination by the returning officer, and at Stawell the allies of Mr Service wore routed by a very simple expedient. Before going to the poll they had been instructed that they should be asked two questions—first as to whether they were natural born or naturalised citizens, and next as to whether they had voted before that day. To the first query they were to reply ‘ Yes,’ and to the second ‘ No,’ and after a little drilling they marched to vote. Liberal ingenuity, however, proved equal to the occasion, and knowing that the enlightened Chinamen had got their lessons by rote, without undertanding the moaning of the farce they were asked to go through, the scrutineer for the Opposition candidate reversed the order of the questions, whereupon the unsuspecting heathen blandly declared that ho had voted before that day, and that he was not a naturalized citizen, and was greatly surprised at being bundled out of the booth without having exercised the suffrage. The stratagem was good ; but would not a short Bill forbidding such a travestie of the ballot by excluding Asiatic voters be better still?”