THE ELECTION PETITIONS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 266, 20 April 1915, Page 5

THE ELECTION PETITIONS.

SOME POINTS DECIDED. By Telegraph .—Press Association. Wellington, April 19. The Full Court gave its reasons tltis morning for its opinion expressed on Friday last that both the Bay of Islands .and Taumarunurelection petitions were in time. In the first-named case, the court held that the time within which the petition must be presented, namely, 28 days, ran from the amended declaration published after the re-count by order of the Magistrate. The court held that the law as now existing was different from that upon which the Walrarapa case, in which it was held the time ran from the endorsement of the writ, was decided and that that case was now of no authority. It further held that the words of section 190 of the Legislature Act, 1008, show that the time must run from the declaration made in pursuance of section 49 of the Act of 1910, which is a declaration in F,»rm No. 22 of the schedule to the Act of 1908. The decision on the latter point decides the question of time in favor of petitioner. In the Taumarunui case the court intimated that it would give its judgment on the question whether the roll was conclusive to-morrow.

Wellington, Last Night. Sir Robert Stout and Judge Edwards, who heard the" Hawkc's Bay election petition, gave judgment to-day on' two points reserved in that case.

One was whether ballot papers on which the complete name of one candidate and the Christian name of the other were struck out were valid. V-.e Magistrate who made the recount had declared these votes informal. The Court upheld this decision. Their judgment says: "Our Act provides, as Ims been pointed out, that any ballot paper that does not clearly indicate the candidate for whom the elector desired to vote must be rejected as informal. To our mind there is a doubt as to what was meant, and we do not therefore see or way to overrule the decision of the Magistrate. If electors able to read will disobey the plain instructions of the Act, must it not bo assumed that they did not want to vote?"

The second question was whether, if a declaration under- section 18 of the 1914 Act, No. 33, was in the form of the schedule of that Act, that declaration was in order. After reviewing the question from the legal standpoint, the Court expressed the opinion that as the declaration was valid it was sufficient to have entitled ifcrsons to get ballot papers, and their votes could not be rejected on the ground that the declaration was invalid. *