Local Option Poll.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume IV, Issue 294, 11 December 1902, Page 3

Local Option Poll.

Wellington, December 9.

Sixty-six electors of Newtown have lodged a petition at the Magistrate’s Court praying to have the recent licensing poll for that district declared void on account of certain irregularities in connection with the manner in which the voting was conducted. Ashburton, December 9.

A petition signed by 60 electors was lodged to-day with the object of upsetting the result of the local option poll, by which No-License was declared carried. The enquiry is fixed for the 18th inst. The following is a summary of the grounds set out in the petition : Improper notice given of the time of the poll and the place of polling booths ; hours not kept according to law ; voting papers not given out simultaneously ; failure to show the stamps on the voting papers ; conversing in the polling booths ; more than six voters in the booths at one time; deputy returning officers absenting themselves from the booths without appointing substitutes ; electors not allowed to vote although their names were on the roll; poll improperly held, there being no valid roll. Dunedin, December 9.

The recount of the Chalmers local option poll has not been concluded. It appears that a difficulty has occurred through the voting papers from one of the polling booths not having come to hand. Petitions have been lodged to hare declared void the local option polls in Chalmers, where prohibition was carried, and in Cavei’sham, where induction was carried, on various grounds and alleged irregularities.