WRONGLY ADDRESSED

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 361, 23 May 1928, Page 12

WRONGLY ADDRESSED

DAIRY BOARD ELECTION NOMINATION EXPLANATION OF DEFAULT (From Our Resident Reporter.) WELLINGTON, Tuesday. How the nomination of Air. B. T. Booker for election to the Dairy Produce Board failed to reach the returning officer in time has been explained. The advertisement published by the returning officer, Mr. William C. Robinson, of the Department of Agriculture, stated that his address was “Department of Agriculture, per private bog, Wellington.” Mr. Booker’s nomination paper was addressed to “the returning officer, New Zealand Dairy Produce Export Control Board, election, Wellington,” and was forwarded by registered post from Auckland on May 18. It reached Wellington on Saturday and the post office officials placed in the private box of the Dairy Produce Board the usual printed notification of a registered package. Owing to inadvertence, the letter was not applied for by the Dairy Board and the post office issued a further notice on Monday. The nomination finally reached the returning officer at the Department of Agriculture at 2.45 p.m. on Monday. The returning officer has decided that the nomination of Mr. Booker cannot be accepted and it is understood he is fortified in this decision by a legal opinion. Therefore, the chairman of the boai'd, Mr. W. Grounds, has been declared elected by the returning officer. It is understood that a hitch occurred in regard to the nomination of Mr. Dynes Fulton for the vacancy in ward 2 and that, to make certain he was duly nominated, Mr. H. H. Sterling, of the New Zealand Co-opera-tive Dairy Company, made a special journey by motor-car from Hamilton to Wellington to attend to the matter personally. A question has been raised whether Air. Fulton’s proposers were registered electors. On investigation the nomination was found to be in order.