The Daily News. TUESDAY, MARCH 19, 1912. VOTING.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 223, 19 March 1912, Page 4

The Daily News. TUESDAY, MARCH 19, 1912. VOTING.

The general method of taking the votes of the people either during a Parliamentary or local election is crude, inconve»ient and unsatisfactory. It forces the personal attendance of the voter, inconveniences the great majority, and, because of the inconvenience, gives only a minimum of the votes of the people. Demonstrating how difficult it is to get many people to record votes, it is only necessary to remind electors that every available vehicle in all electorates is commissioned to take people to a polling booth a/t a general election. Hundreds of voters would not attend polling booths if candidates and their friends did not rouse them out and pay the piper. The recording of a vote is optional. The general franchise has been granted to the people after huge struggles. Having obtained the privilege through struggle, many people do not exercise it. We are of the opinion that every person entitled to do so should be made to vote or to give a valid reason for refraining. Many local body elections are farcical beyond belief. Elaborate machinery is devised, for instance, in order that meralers of harbor boards and other bodies shall be elected. At the last such elec{tion in New Plymouth and district, returning officers in many cases sat in a polling booth all day in order that two or three votes might be registered. The waste of time and money is appalling, and the results entirely unsatisfactory. There is no reason why both the Parliamentary vote and the local bodies' vote should not be taken through the post. When the census papers are sent round the citizen is carefully warned that he must do his duty to the State by filling up a most elaborate form. He attends no public place in order to perform this duty, and the results are satisfactory.. If voting papers were sent to electors by post, even though voting was not compulsory, a much greater proportion of citizens would avail themselves of the franchise, because the system would not dislocate business. At present, especially during a Parliamentary election, the business of every voter |

is in some degree sacrificed to the State. Morally, the State has no right to order citizens to cease work in order to elect a Parliament, and, in the matter of local bodies' elections, it is a common circumstance that representation is secured by the very barest proportion of votes. Polls on the raising of loans are perhaps the greatest of all farces, and it is most unusual to get any reasonable proportion of citizens to vote in these matters. A whole community is frequently saddled with a loan—or may lose a loan—at the instigation of a miserable proportion of ratepayers. If every elector at the general elections or local bodies' elections were served through the post with the necessary voting papers, adequate representation would unquestionably be secured. If the law were amended making it mandatory on every qualified person to return the voting papers adequately filled in, or with reasons for refusing to vote, the reform from the cumbrous, wasteful and unsatisfactory system now in vogue would be welcomed everywhere. If there are any reasons why the present system should continue, nobody has stated them, and it is simply kept in existence because politicians have not had the courage or the nous to fight for its alteration. Summed up, the advantages of voting by post would be: More adequate representation by reaching every elector without trouble; abolition of the grievously expensive machinery devised to get every vote, and always failing; abolition of candidates' influence by the provision of vehicles and other means for affecting an election; and the abolition of the necessity for those who wish to vote giving up business to do so. We commend the voting by post idea to the consideration of the I member for Taranaki.