Sir John Forrest has communicated with the Department of Home Affairs asking that the rolls used at each of the polling places be compared with one another so as to ascertain if any one voted more than once, and also with a view to detecting impersonation.

The Chief Electoral Officer in reporting on the request says:

1. that all ballot-papers, certified lists of voters, and other documents used at an election are required to be sealed up after the scrutiny and preserved intact for the purposes of the Court of Disputed Returns in the event of any petition being lodged in relation to the election;
2. that unless there is some special ground for action in the nature of an allegation or allegations of fraud which can be investigated, it is not advisable to enter upon a comparison of rolls until the period has elapsed within which the certified lists, etc. may have to be produced in Court, as it may, among other things, be held that documents which have passed through hands other than those provided for by law may not, on presentation to the Court, be in the condition in which they were when sealed up at the scrutiny;
3. that it will be practicable at a later stage to compare any rolls concerning which there may be reasonable ground for a suspicion, and to this end the Commonwealth Electoral Officer for the State has been instructed to enquire into the representations made by Sir John Forrest, and to gather the fullest information available from the officers engaged in the conduct of the elections;
4. that experience has shown that a general comparison of rolls would produce no satisfactory result, but on the other hand, would almost certainly lead to a considerable number of innocent people being subjected to serious indignity and suspicion as the result of police investigation, and, in effect, placed in the position of having to prove that they had not voted more than once, owing to the fact that the Presiding Officers throughout the Commonwealth in many cases through inadvertence or misunderstanding during the pressure of the polling may have ticked a name or names of electors as having voted, when as a matter of fact a similar name either above or below should have been marked; and
5. that apart from any action which may be necessary as the result of any allegations or suspicions I propose, for administrative reasons, to cause a comparison of certain selected rolls to be instituted at the appropriate time.

The Minister for Home Affairs has referred the matter to me for advice.

Under the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1902-1909 Part XVI the validity of any election or return may be disputed by petition addressed to the Court of Disputed Returns. The petition must be signed by a candidate at the election or by a person who was qualified to vote thereat.

Regulation 27 of the Regulations under the Act is as follows:

27. All ballot-papers, Lists of Voters, and 'Q' forms used at an election shall, after the scrutiny is completed, be sealed up by the officer who conducted the scrutiny. Assistant Returning Officers shall transmit all the ballot-papers and other documents referred to above sealed up by them to the Returning Officer for the Division, who shall be responsible for the safe custody of these documents until the authority of the Commonwealth Electoral Officer for the State has been obtained for their destruction.

I am of opinion that, after the documents have been sealed up in accordance with regulation 27, they should not be disturbed until the election to which they relate can be no longer questioned. It would therefore be impracticable to make the comparison suggested by Sir John Forrest until that time. The question whether the comparison suggested should be made after that time has expired is one of discretion. A complete comparison of all the lists of voters used in the different subdivisions throughout the Commonwealth would involve a considerable amount of labour and some expense. It would be valueless in itself as evidence of any individual case of double voting or of impersonation-because in any individual case of double ticking there is no means of showing whether it indicates double voting by the elector, or personation of him by someone else, or a mere clerical error on the part of the poll clerk, though such a comparison might afford a useful check for the purpose of detecting any systematic fraud on a large scale.

It appears to me that-in the absence of any grounds for suspecting any fraudulent practices-the checking of selected rolls, as suggested by the Chief Electoral Officer, should be sufficient for administrative purposes.

[Vol. 7, p. 451 ]