Hawke's Bay Times. Nullius addictus jurare in verba magistri. MONDAY, JANUARY 30, 1871.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 17, Issue 930, 30 January 1871, Page 2

Hawke's Bay Times. Nullius addictus jurare in verba magistri. MONDAY, JANUARY 30, 1871.

The question whether or not secrecy in voting is secured by the new Ballot Act, under which the present elections are being carried on, has not assumed great importance in this Province, in consequence of there having been no opposition in either district to the old members, but this has not been the case in other parts of the Colony. In the Wellington Country District, for instance, as a contemporary informs us, out of the whole electorate only 241 recorded their votes-—a very small number as compared with those who might have voted. The reason given is that large numbers of the electors had no confidence in the secrecy of the ballot. In one particular instance it appears that no fewer than twenty electors refused to vote when they found that they could be identified by the number affixed to their name in the list of voters, and also endorsed on their voting papers; and in other polling booths elector after elector retired without voting when they saw how the system was managed,

It is quite evident that under this system voting is not secret, and that there is sufficient gro.uid for the suspicion of the voters that the way in which they vote may be known, at least to those who arc present at the examination of the papers; and though the organs in the interest of the Government assure us that it is practically secret voting, and that these persons are bound not to divulge any fact that may come to their knowledge in reference to the way in which any elector may vote, still the whole system is most unsatisfactory, for many electors will object to even the Returning Officer, and especially to the scrutineers, having the knowledge of how their votes have been recorded, and to the bare possibility of its becoming more widely known.

It is no objection to Bay that no man could remember the numbers corresponding to each of a long list of names, because no person would require to do this; bul what be v-ould require to do would be comparatively easy to any ordinary memory—that is, to remember the particular numbers coiresponding to a few particular names. Some men could do this to an extent that woald be hardly credited; and after all, it is only a feat of the same kind as is performed eyery day by schoolboys —the getting off by rote a column of names and corresponding numbers. From the very first trial of the new system its defects in this respect were apparent, some of the earliest voters under it having torn off the number from the comer of their voting paper; bufc all such voLers' papers were destroyed, and the votes not recorded., be-

cause the means of identifying the voter if required was wanting.

The people of this Colony do not want a' sham such as this Ballob Bill proves to be, but a reality. The sole reason for the change was that secret voting might be substituted for the old system, and as this is not accomplished under the Act, it follows that it requires to be so altered during next session as to give voters confidence that no person shall be cognizant of the way in which they have recorded their votes.