ROLL PURGING

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 July 1938, Page 8

ROLL PURGING

THE MASTERTON ELECTORATE MANY NAMES REMOVED When the general election comes along, towards the end of the year, it may be taken for granted that the interest of the people will be exceptionally keen. At this stage, however, it is amazing to find the number of people who are not even interested enough to take steps to ensure that they will be able to exercise their votes. Save for the return of a few stray replies, the work of checking, or. as it is more commonly known, purging the roll has been completed for the Masterton electorate, and this work has revealed some surprising details. The purging of the roll really means a process of thorough examination to bring it up to date. As the result of a preliminary examination of the Masterton roll, the Registrar despatched notices to about 11,000 electors in an endeavour to ascertain if they were still eligible to vote. A fair proportion of the notices were returned as unclaimed, and unless steps are taken by these people to be put on the supplementary roll their names naturally will be deleted from the roll, part of which is already in the printer's hands. In a total of about 1000 cases, letters have been sent by registered post to electors, pointing out that unless an objection is lodged, their' names will be removed from the roll, and to date

some 200 replies have been received to these notices. So far 1714 names have actually been deleted from the main roll, but this of course is counter-balanced by the new enrolments, which have been made during the period since the last election. Prior to last election, names on the main and supplementary rolls totalled 10,504, but already this year there are 10,836 persons on the main roll alone. The supplementary roll does not close until the date of issue of the writ for the election, but in view of the keen interest now being evinced in political affairs, it is quite likely that the supplementary roll will be one of the heaviest on record.