SHOW YOUR PARCHMENT! Electors' " Rights " Wanted.

Free Lance, Volume IV, Issue 160, 25 July 1903, Page 8

SHOW YOUR PARCHMENT! Electors' " Rights " Wanted.

NOW and again we get a few corners knocked off the satisfaction we feel in being the most en-

lightened, honest, and straightforward people in the world. That alleged "roll -stuffing" in Auckland and elsewhere, for instance That it was believed to exist is evident by the fact that it is considered necessary for a committee of the Auckland City Council to go into the matter. It seems that, under existing electoral regulations, a person so disposed can go around and vote at as many booths as he likes providing he give* a name which is on the roll, and one which hasn't been duly marked off elsewhere. # * * That is to say, a man might be Smith here, Jones there, Brown further down the street, and Robinson round the corner. There is no machinery by which this plural voting iniquity can at present be stopped, and it is increasingly apparent that, for the sake of the purity on which we all pride ourselves, a system has got to be devised by which the man who desires very earnestly to obtain the mayor of his choice may place him many points ahead, in the easiest possible way, and with small chance of detection. * •«■ * There seems to be a fairly simple way out of the difficulty if the authorities are earnest in their desire to curtail the now boundless powers of any single elector who is assisted by compilers. There have been few disputes, if any, in the colony, on the identification of a person by a miner's right. Should a person on a goldfield be suspected of any irregularity or of not being a qualified person to hold a claim, or residence site, his miner's right for the tame being in force is always produced. Its production is deemed to be conclusive evidence of his bona fides. Although, as a further precaution, it is obvious that in documents serving the purpose of identifying specified persons, the new system of finger-print reading, now being successfully carried out by the Government Finger-print Bureau, might be used with advantage. What is to prevent the adoption of the identifying elector's right, in the shape of a parchment, to be issued by the Registrar of Electors, and to be cancelled by the Registrar of Deaths m case the holder died p No person, of course, would be able to record a vote unless he showed his parchment, and duplication of such a document would be impossible except by clever forgeiy. The addition of the finger-punt impression would entirety obviate the possibility of deceiving the authorities, and the not over-sweet moral atmosphere of elections, general or municipal, would certainly be purified. The country will anxiously await any further disclosures that may be made in this roll-stuffing connection, and will see the feasibility and necessity of a system by which a much-needed change could be made.