THE PRIVILEGE OF VOTING

Taupo Times, Volume III, Issue 146, 12 November 1954, Page 6

THE PRIVILEGE OF VOTING

IN countries with a political tradition and constitutional system such as our own the opportunity to vote, and in so doing to have the choice of any candidates who may wish to offer, is regarded as a right. But in view of conditions prevailing in many countries dominated by totalitarian philosophies, it would be more realistic to consider that opportunity as a privilege. In sober fact it is a right that we only enjoy because men have in the not very distant past been willing to struggle and die to secure it. The 98 per cent of Russian and East German voters who "vote" as they are told from single-party lists might well envy the New Zealander his opportunity to pass an effective judgment on his Government. Whether New Zealanders sufficiently appreciate their voting privilege will be shown by the number who cast their votes tomorrow. In the earlier stages of the present election campaign there seemed to' be an apparent apathy toward election meetings, but it does not follow that this proved lack of real interest in the election itself. There might be an anology between those who did not attend the meetings and the Irishman's parrot. Although it did not talk it thought a lot. A Pole recently said, with reference to the New Zealander, 'He does not know how good he has it. He 'thinks he cannot lose what he has got. But he can, and we know how he can."

( History shows that th efirst step toward losing a right is the failure to exercise it. Neglect of democratic privileges leads to a diminishing sense of their value, and a consequent loss of willingness to sacrfitce anything to retain them, thus opening the way for dictators of the Right or Left to seize power. We have see nthis happen over alarge part of the world in one generation, and what has happened there could happen here, It is not fanciful to suggest that neglect of the opportunity to vote is a first step toward the loss of democratic freedoms as we understand them. Even in our own Commonwealth countries there is a tendency, perhaps an unthinking one, to whittle away democratic liberties, as was emphasised by- a recent Lord Chief Justice of England. An example in our own country, that raised hardly a protest, was the disturbing and unnecessarily wide extension last year, in the Wild Life Act, of the right t osearch premises without a search warrant. Such restrictions of rights that have been won by long years of struggle are often introduced with good intentions, but with too little knowledge of the warnings of history. The only way to protect democratic liberties is to exercise them. At the moment, the first duty of all is to record their votes tomorrow. ' The duty may seem dull, the road to the polling booth dusty, but the job of voting is more iniportant than, say, going fishing, or even than visiting the T.A.B.