AN ELECTION EPISODE.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXV, Issue 12, 15 January 1915, Page 8

AN ELECTION EPISODE.

VOTER FINED FOR INTERFERENCE. Per Press Association. Auckland, January 14. People wjip do not know how to vote are liable to get their friends into trouble on polling day. An instance of this occurred last election day, which resulted in Harold K. Simpson, the licensee of the Alexandra Hotel, being charged before Mr E. C. Gotten, S.M., this morning, that, at; the Sailors’ Mission Hall polling booth, on election day, he interfered with a voter by advising hot how to vote. The defendant did not appear, and Scnior-Sergt. Rutledge stated that when the defendant was driving a motor car down Hobson street on election day he noticed an old woman • standing at a window. He beckoned to her, and eventually went to the house and took her in his car to the Mission Hall polling booth. As he and she got out of the car ho instructed her that she would get two voting papers, and that she was to strike out the bottom line on each paper. A number of people heard him, and some of them remonstrated with him.

His Worship said that had the evidence gone in the direction of showing that the defendant was making a custom of interfering with voters, he would have been heavily fined, but the evidence showed that the woman was very old, and could neither read nor write. It was possible in such circumstances that the defendant might have known the voter’s desire. Still, anybody with any sense should know that he had no light to interfere with a voter, or to offer advice on voting day, even if the other person had been deaf, dumb, and blind. Defendant would be convicted and fined £2, and Ills costs.