A NEW PARLIAMENT IN THE MAKING
1
“Register, register, register!” Such was the emphasized advice which
Sir Robert Peel gave to his Tory followers so long ago as 1837. At
that time Party organization as we now understand it was unknown, and
each elector had to see for himself that he got on the register. The
motto of all political Parties in these days of thorough organization
is more than ever, “Register, register, register!” For when the
General Election comes the fate of Parties is decided beforehand
by the extent to which their respective adherents have got on the
register of voters. The Party complexion of the successful candidate
in any constituency is always a reflection of the predominant
political colour of the register of voters.
The preparation of the register of voters, which was first provided
for by the Reform Act of 1832, is the duty of the local authorities,
and is discharged, under the Representation of the People Act,
1918, at the public expense, one-half being paid out of the local
rates and the other out of the National Exchequer. The registration
officers are the town clerk in borough divisions, and the clerk of
the county council in county divisions. The qualifications for a vote
are, for men, twenty-one years of age and six months’ residence as a
householder or lodger, or occupation of business premises; and for
women, thirty years of age, possessing herself the local government
franchise by reason of six months’ ownership or tenancy of land or
premises in her own right, or being the wife of a local government
elector. Voters’ lists are first compiled by the registration
officers from the rate-books, supplemented by a house-to-house
inquiry to get the names of householders whose rates are paid
through the landlord and of persons qualified as wives or lodgers.
Printed copies of these provisional or draft lists are exhibited
for public reference in the town or county halls, post offices,
public libraries, and at the doors of churches and chapels in each
constituency. This is done to afford all concerned an opportunity of
seeing whether they are on the lists, and, if necessary, of giving
notice to the returning officer of claims to make corrections or
additions.
It is curious what little attention is given to these huge and
unwieldy bundles of printed matter. Few voters are moved to examine
them. Small boys take a real interest in them, and that is usually
of an impish and destructive kind. Otherwise the lists are too
often left neglected. The average man apparently never troubles
himself about his vote until a contest arises in his constituency
or the General Election approaches. There seems to be in his mind
the supposition that it is the duty of some person or some body—he
frequently knows not who or what—to see that he shall be in the
position to vote when the time comes for the exercise of this
privilege of his citizenship. And in a sense the average man is
right. There is a person keenly anxious that he should get the vote
to which he is entitled—the local agent of the Conservative, Liberal,
or Labour Party.
To this most important branch of political work the central offices
of the great political organizations give the closest attention. At
one time large sums of money were spent in registration, provided
partly from the funds of the central offices, and partly by the
sitting Members, to maintain their interest, as it was called, or
by prospective candidates of other politics who were “nursing”
constituencies. No sooner did a stranger come to reside in a
constituency—especially where Parties are somewhat evenly balanced,
and where, in consequence, the rival Party organizations were highly
active—than he was waited upon by the Party canvassers to ascertain
his political opinions. The local organization of the Party to which
he gave adhesion saw that his name duly appeared on the register of
voters. That is so to some extent yet, though it is not carried to
the same degree of Party competition as formerly. The Representation
of the People Act, 1918, lifted registration above being a mere
wrangle between rival political agents over the body of the claimant
to a vote, by establishing the principle that it was the business of
the State to see that every qualified person was put on the register
of voters, despite the disfranchising activity of the Party agents
and the ignorance or apathy of the individual citizen. Each Party now
confines its operations to seeing that qualified voters of its own
political colour are put on the register and kept there. And it must
be said that as the result of their competing watchfulness a register
as complete and accurate as possible is usually obtained.
The Representation of the People Act, 1918, also reformed the
procedure of the courts for correcting and amending the voters’ lists
and passing them finally as the register of voters. Formerly these
courts were presided over by revising barristers who were lawyers of
not less than seven years’ standing appointed by the senior Judge
of the summer assizes for the constituencies within his circuit,
and were paid 200 guineas each for deciding claims and objections.
The political Parties used to be represented in the revision courts
by their agents, who left nothing undone to put on the register as
many as possible of their own supporters, and to put off as many as
possible of their opponents. Since 1918 the revision of the lists has
been done by the town clerks, or the clerks of the county councils,
as registration officers. I saw some of the reformed revision
courts at work in London for the first time in 1918. The procedure
was quite simple. The town clerk sat at the head of the table with
the voters’ lists before him, and the overseer by his side to help
him in his duties. At the table also were the agents of the local
Party organizations. The lists were gone through. Errors in the
spelling of names or the numbering of residences were corrected;
duplicate entries were struck out. It was all done smoothly and
rapidly. There was none of the old contention between the Party
agents for the insertion of this name or the omission of that which
I frequently had to listen to in the old revision courts. Claims
were numerous, and the disposition was to allow them. On the other
hand, the objections were few, and were mostly formal. When the full
register of voters for each division is printed a copy is to be
seen and consulted at the office of the registration officer of the
division—the town hall or the county council hall. The part of the
register relating to each unit of the division, ward, or district is
hung in local post offices, the public libraries and church porches.
2
Everything is now in readiness for the dissolution of Parliament. The
two Houses of Lords and Commons are dissolved by Royal Proclamation
issued by the King “by and with the advice of Our Privy Council”
(which means the Ministers) and under the Great Seal of the United
Kingdom. In order to keep the existence of Parliament as nearly
continuous as possible, a new Parliament is summoned at the same
moment that the old is dissolved. Hence in the Royal Proclamation the
Sovereign declares his desire to meet as soon as may be his people,
and to have their advice in Parliament, and accordingly requires the
Lord Chancellors of Great Britain and Ireland to issue forthwith the
writs for causing the Lords spiritual and temporal and Commons who
are to serve in the said Parliament to be duly returned and give
their attendance. Thereupon the machinery of a General Election is
put into motion by the Clerk of the Crown in Chancery (an officer of
the Crown in attendance upon the Lord Chancellor in Parliament, with
offices in the precincts of the House of Lords), and does not cease
working until the two Houses are again constituted and in session.
Various kinds of writs are issued from the Crown Office. There
are the writs of summons to attend in Parliament, which are sent
to the temporal and spiritual peers. There are three classes of
peerages which carry an hereditary right to a seat in the House of
Lords—peerages of England created before 1707; peerages of Great
Britain, created between the Union with Scotland in 1707 and the
Union with Ireland in 1801; and peerages of the United Kingdom
created since 1801. The twenty-six Bishops who hold peerages by right
of office and the twenty-eight Irish representative peers who are
elected for life by the peerage of Ireland also receive writs, but
sixteen Scottish representative peers elected for each Parliament
by the peerage of Scotland assembled at Holyrood House, Edinburgh,
do not. However, the writs with which we are now more particularly
concerned are those for the election of the Commons of Great Britain.
They are sent by the Clerk of the Crown to the returning officers
of the constituencies—in county areas the sheriffs, in urban areas
the mayor or chairman of the borough council—commanding them, in the
name of the King, to “cause election to be made according to law” of
Members to serve in the new Parliament; and “to cause the names of
such Members, when so elected, whether they be present or absent, to
be certified to us in Our Chancery without delay.” The writs for a
General Election are, in fact, always prepared in the Crown Office
and ready to be issued in case there might be any sudden dissolution
of Parliament before it has run its prescribed term of five years.
They are printed on parchment in imitation copper-plate handwriting,
with blanks for names and dates to be filled in by a penman, and are
oblong in shape, about 15 inches across by 12 inches in length.
Years ago the transmission of the writs was a dignified and onerous
and also a profitable duty. Messengers of the Great Seal, as they
were called, were despatched through the country post-haste with
the writs for personal delivery to the returning officers, and they
collected five guineas for a writ for a borough and ten guineas for a
writ for a city or a county. Under this system grave irregularities
prevailed. Candidates schemed to get early possession of the writs
in order to forestall, by hastening the election, any threatened
opposition; and the Messengers of the Great Seal, it was said, were
disposed to give a writ to the candidate who would pay most for it.
But an Act passed in 1813 provided for the conveyance and delivery of
the writs through the prosaic but purer agency of the Post Office.
Precautions are taken to avoid any chance of their going astray.
They are placed in envelopes of strong cartridge paper with a lining
of glazed calico, each addressed to the respective returning officer,
and are conveyed to the General Post Office, London, by one of the
clerks of the Crown Office, designated for this occasion, “Messenger
of the Great Seal,” who receives from an official appointed by
the Postmaster-General a written acknowledgment of the delivery
of his precious charge. The writs are then despatched through the
first available post as registered letters. With each there is sent
an injunction to the postmaster of the place where the returning
officer resides to have the writ safely and speedily delivered, and
to get a receipt from the returning officer. This receipt the local
postmaster transmits to the Postmaster-General, who in turn has the
particulars entered in a book which is available for inspection by
any person interested. In what is known as the London Metropolitan
area, extending into four counties—Middlesex, Surrey, Kent and
Essex—personal service of the writs to the returning officers of the
divisions by the Messenger of the Great Seal is still in vogue, the
messenger travelling in a motor-car instead of on horseback, and
demanding no fees for his services.
Nomination day is the same in all constituencies, as provided by the
Representation of the People Act, 1918. On the day appointed, the
eighth day after the date of the Royal Proclamation, the returning
officer attends at the municipal buildings, or the courthouse,
within certain fixed hours—usually from 10 a.m. till noon—to receive
nominations of candidates. The nomination paper sets out the name,
abode, profession or calling of the candidate, and the names and
addresses of two registered electors, who propose and second him,
and of eight other assenting burgesses. Each candidate provides
himself with several nomination papers, filled up by electors from
various classes or sections of the constituency, with a view to
show the representative character of his supporters, and also to
secure himself from the risk of the nomination being declared null
and void by the returning officer owing to some irregularity in
the original nomination paper. The Ballot Act requires that the
nomination paper must be handed in to the returning officer by the
candidate personally, or by his proposer or seconder. At one election
the nomination paper was given in by the agent of the candidate, and
this was held to be fatal to the nomination. It was a small technical
point, and since then it has come to be understood generally by
agents of all Parties that no advantage is to be taken of such slips
or oversights.
3
Membership of the House of Commons is remarkably free and
unrestricted. Under the American Constitution it is necessary for a
Member of Congress—whether he sits in the House of Representatives or
in the Senate—to reside in the state by which he is returned. There
is no such rule in the case of Members of Parliament. It was provided
by a statute of Henry V that “knights of the shires and citizens and
burgesses should be dwelling and resident” within the constituencies
they represented. But this residential qualification had been evaded
or fallen into disuse long before 1620, when a committee of the House
of Commons recommended its abolition. It was not formally repealed,
however, until 1774. The Act (14 Geo. III, C. 58) declared that the
laws as to residence, passed in the fifteenth century, “have been
found by long usage to be unnecessary and have become obsolete”; and
in order to “obviate all doubt that may arise upon the same” it was
ordered that the statute book should be cleared of all enactments
relating “to the residence of persons to be elected to serve in
Parliament.”
In view of the common interests of the country and its complete
coherence in social and economic life, it would be idle to limit
the electors in their choice of representatives to local residents.
Moreover, such a restriction would tend to the exclusion from
Parliament of able and distinguished men whose reputation is national
rather than local. But one regrettable result of this freedom of
selection is that the varying idiosyncrasies of the different parts
of the country are no longer reflected, distinctly and sharply, in
the House of Commons. The representatives are not, in many cases,
racy of the soil of their constituencies. Each of them is not
permeated with the spirit of the place for which he sits—thinking
its local thought, speaking its dialect, having its accent on his
tongue. A man with an Irish brogue may sit for a London constituency.
A South of England man may represent the northernmost constituency
in Scotland. This typical Yorkshireman finds a seat in the West
of England; that unmistakable Devon man speaks for a place in
Lancashire. The manufacturer is returned by an agricultural county;
the country squire by an industrial borough. It is true that in
the main the representatives of Wales and Scotland are essentially
Welsh and Scottish, though less so with respect to Scotland than
with respect to the other Celtic fringe. The English membership,
which constitutes the vast bulk of the House, is also strong in
English characteristics; but the views, feelings and interests of a
particular locality are seldom expressed in its voice and with its
manner by its representative. Though a local man is still supposed to
be, more or less, a strong candidate, in truth local representation
in Parliament is fast losing its local character and ceasing to
have any local purpose at all under the operation of the Caucus,
or the system of rigidly organized political Parties. Members of
Parliament are no longer chosen specially to safeguard the local
interests of their constituencies. Their chief purpose is to have the
country governed and administered by the light of their political
principles. This Member is said to sit for Hodgeshire, that other
for Cottonopolis. What they really represent, generally speaking, is
the Conservative Central Office, or the Liberal Central Office, or
the Labour Executive. But while membership of the House of Commons
is now thoroughly political, it is, for that very reason, also
thoroughly national. “Every Member, though chosen by one particular
district, when elected and returned serves for the whole Realm.” So
wrote Blackstone, in his _Commentaries on the Laws of England_, about
the middle of the eighteenth century. It was, then, perhaps, but a
pious aspiration. It is now undoubtedly an accomplished fact, at
least in the sense that the representative serves for the whole Realm
according to the political principles which he is returned to uphold.
The property qualifications which formerly made a seat in the House
of Commons the privilege of the rich were abolished in 1858. At no
time was it possible for any man but a man of substantial means to
gain access to the House. But it was not till 1711, in the reign of
Queen Anne, that an Act was passed providing that all Members—except
the eldest sons of peers and the representatives of the Universities
and of Scottish constituencies—must possess an income from land to
the extent of £600 a year in the case of a knight of the shire, and
of £300 a year in the case of a citizen of a city and a burgess
of a borough—the three classes into which Members of the House of
Commons were then divided. The enactment was designed to perpetuate
the ascendancy in the House of Commons of the country or Tory Party,
which they themselves feared was being threatened by the rich
manufacturers and traders who were being returned by the cities and
towns. Swift described it in the _Examiner_ as “the greatest security
that was ever contrived for preserving the Constitution, which
otherwise might in a little time be wholly at the mercy of the monied
interest.”
The law, however, was evaded frequently by fictitious conveyances
of property. Any candidate could be required to make a declaration
before the returning officer that he possessed the necessary amount
of income from land on the application of his rival or of any two
electors; and, in order to be ready for this emergency, should it
arise, it was the custom for landless men to have transferred to
them by relatives or friends on the eve of the election sufficient
landed property to qualify, which they returned again to the donors
as soon as the election was over. To put a stop to this practice an
Act was passed in 1760, during the reign of George II, by which a
Member, when he came to the Table of the House of Commons to take the
oath of allegiance and sign the roll, had not only to swear that he
possessed £600 a year or £300 a year from land—according as he was a
knight of the shire or a citizen or burgess—but to provide the Clerk
with a schedule setting out in detail the situation and extent of the
qualifying property. Even so, membership of the House of Commons was
not restricted to the genuine possessors of landed estate. Temporary
transfers of property in land notoriously went on all the same. The
only difference was that the transfer was now not for the election
only but for the life of the Parliament. Landed relatives or friends
were still accommodating. The rich but landless man could obtain
from his bank a rent-charge on some of the landed property which
it possessed in the way of business; and for the man with no great
balance at his bankers there were attorneys ready to provide him with
the qualification for a fee of 100 guineas. It was well known that
those brilliant parliamentarians, Burke, Pitt, Fox and Sheridan, were
thus fictitiously qualified one way or another.
But why should the property qualification be restricted to incomes
from real estate? Why should not incomes from personal property
also qualify? It was inevitable that these questions should be
asked insistently and urgently with the increasing rise of wealthy
merchants and manufacturers ambitious of taking part in public life.
Nevertheless, it was not until 1838—six years after the great Reform
Act, which really opened the doors of the House of Commons to the
middle classes—that it was provided by a statute passed by the Whig
Parliament that general property or professional incomes should also
serve to qualify. In all other respects the law remained unchanged.
The county Member had still to have an income of £600 a year, the
borough Member had still to have an income of £300 a year, and both
were still required to swear to their qualifications at the Table of
the House and supply particulars to the Clerk.
Twenty years elapsed before the property test for the House of
Commons was finally abolished. The year before—that is to say, in
1857—there was a painful parliamentary scandal in connection with
the property qualification. The return of Edward Auchmuty Glover for
Beverley was petitioned against, and as the result of the trial the
election was declared void on the ground that he was not possessed
of the qualifying income. Glover was, by order of the House, tried
at the Old Bailey for having made a false declaration at the Table
that he was qualified. The jury convicted, but recommended the
prisoner to mercy, as this was the first prosecution for such
an offence, and as it was notorious that declarations as to the
possession of the property qualification were loosely made by
Members of Parliament. A sentence of three-months’ imprisonment as
a first-class misdemeanant was, however, imposed. In the following
year Locke King—a private Member who cleared the statute book of many
obsolete measures—introduced a Bill for the abolition of the property
qualification, which, though it encountered considerable opposition
in both Houses, went through; and since June, 1858, the penniless
man, as well as the landless man, has been eligible for membership of
the House of Commons.
From this arises a constitutional anomaly which appears strange
indeed. A pauper without a penny in the world, homeless and voteless,
may be elected a Member of Parliament, while only a man of property
and position, to the extent at least of being a householder or a
lodger of six months’ standing, and a payer of poor rate, directly
or indirectly, is qualified to vote for a Member of Parliament.
Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, in a speech on the franchise laws which I
heard him make in the House of Commons in 1895, gave a striking
illustration of the absurdity to which the law in practice led. He
said that his son, Austen Chamberlain, who gave him the pleasure of
his society by residing with him, being neither a householder nor
a lodger, was not entitled to the vote; and yet the law not only
allowed his disfranchised son to sit in the House of Commons but to
become a Member of the Government, he being at the time Civil Lord
of the Admiralty. Mr. Austin Chamberlain was subsequently appointed
Chancellor of the Exchequer, the greatest and most responsible post
in the Government next to that of the Prime Minister; and in the
years he was the head of the Department controlling the raising
and expenditure of the national taxation—being still unmarried and
residing with his father—his name was not to be found on the burgess
rolls of the Kingdom in respect of any rating qualification. I find
that in the General Election of 1906 Mr. Austen Chamberlain voted in
the City of London as a liveryman of the Cordwainers’ Company.
4
There are, however, certain disqualifications for Membership of the
House of Commons. Aliens cannot compete for a seat. The candidate
must either be a natural born British subject or a naturalized
foreigner. Colonials and native Indians are, of course, eligible.
But any British subject may not be nominated. The candidate must
be of the age of twenty-one years. Yet the production of a birth
certificate is not required by the returning officer. There are at
least two notable instances of “infants” having sat in the House of
Commons. Charles James Fox was returned for Midhurst before he was
twenty, and Lord John Russell for Tavistock before he was twenty-one.
Mental imbecility is a disqualification. It would, perhaps, be too
much to say that the candidate is required to be of sound mind and
understanding, but he must not obviously be a lunatic or idiot. If
he should lose his senses after election his case is provided for
by “An Act to amend the law in regard to the vacating of seats in
the House of Commons,” which was passed in 1886. It enacts that if a
Member is committed as a lunatic to any asylum it is the duty of the
medical doctor who made the committal and the superintendent of the
asylum to report the case without delay to the Speaker. The Speaker
then directs the Commissioners of Lunacy to examine the Member,
and if they report that the Member is of unsound mind six months
are allowed to elapse, when they again examine and report, and if
they still find the Member insane the two reports are laid on the
Table of the House, and the seat thereby becomes vacant. Blindness
is not a disqualification—not even for the Treasury Bench. There
is the remarkable case of Mr. Henry Fawcett, who, in spite of this
great physical disability, sat for Hackney, was Postmaster-General
in the Gladstone Administration of 1880, and was the originator of
the postal order, parcel post, and Post Office annuities. Are deaf
and dumb persons disqualified by reason of their physical defects?
They are said to be, but as there is no case in point, the matter is
somewhat in doubt.
English peers and peers of Great Britain and the United Kingdom are
ineligible for election to the House of Commons, being, of course,
hereditary Members of the House of Lords. The second Lord Selborne
sat as Lord Wolmer in the House of Commons for West Edinburgh, when,
on the death of his father in 1895, he succeeded to the peerage.
As he desired to remain in the House of Commons, he raised the
point that a peer, as such, was not debarred from sitting in that
House until he received his writ of summons to the other House as
a Lord of Parliament, and declared his intention to be not to make
the necessary application for such writ of summons. The House of
Commons appointed a Select Committee to inquire into the matter, and
on their report that Lord Wolmer had succeeded to a peerage of the
United Kingdom the constituency of West Edinburgh was declared to
be vacant, and a new writ was at once issued for the election of a
Member for the seat. It is the succession to a peerage, and not the
receipt of the writ of summons to the House of Lords, which is held
to disqualify for membership of the House of Commons. Scottish peers
are also precluded. Even those outside the sixteen representative
peers of Scotland—elected by the general body of the Scottish peerage
to sit for each Parliament in the House of Lords—are ineligible for
election to the House of Commons. The Irish peerage is not under this
political disability. By the Act of Union between Great Britain and
Ireland an Irish peer—providing he is not one of the twenty-eight
Irish representative peers elected by the general body of the Irish
peerage to sit for life in the House of Lords—may be returned by any
constituency in England or Scotland. But he is disqualified for an
Irish seat. The most famous instance was that of Lord Palmerston,
who was an Irish peer and sat in the House of Commons for an English
constituency for close on sixty years.
Clergymen of the Church of England, of the Church of Scotland, and
Roman Catholic priests are disqualified. The statutory exclusion of
clergymen from the House of Commons dates from the beginning of the
nineteenth century. Until then the question was involved in doubt and
uncertainty. It was first raised in a concrete form by the return of
the famous Radical parson, Horne Tooke, in 1801 for the nomination
borough of Old Sarum. He held no benefice in the Church, but as in
law he was still a clerk in Holy Orders it was contended that he
was ineligible. A Select Committee appointed to inquire into the
precedents reported that they were not sufficiently clear to warrant
the exclusion of Tooke; but though he was, accordingly, allowed to
retain his seat, an Act was immediately passed which closed the doors
of the House of Commons to clergymen of the Established Church and
ministers of the Church of Scotland. Church of England parsons who,
under the provisions of the Clerical Disabilities Act of 1870, divest
themselves of their Orders become thereby eligible for election, and
several ex-clergymen have sat in the House of Commons. Roman Catholic
priests are expressly incapacitated by a clause of the Emancipation
Act of 1829, which admitted Roman Catholic laymen to Parliament. The
Act of 1801 does not apply to ministers of dissenting Churches, and
they therefore are qualified to sit in the House of Commons.
Office of various kinds is a disqualification. Judges of the High
Court and county court judges are ineligible. In the time of the
Stuarts a resolution of the House of Commons precluded Judges of
the High Court from sitting in Parliament. During the Commonwealth,
when the House of Lords was abolished, Sir Matthew Hale and other
distinguished Judges sat in the House of Commons. It was not until
the passing of the Judicature Act, 1875, that Judges of the High
Court came under a statutory disability to sit in the House of
Commons. County court judges had already been precluded by an Act
passed in 1847. A Recorder may sit in the House of Commons, but not
for the city or borough in which he exercises his jurisdiction in
criminal matters. The civil servants on the permanent staff of the
various Departments of Government are debarred from sitting in the
House of Commons. Yet commissioned officers of the Army and Navy
are qualified. But Army officers become M.P.’s at the sacrifice of
half their pay, though they remain on the active list. Government
contractors for work to be done or goods to be supplied in the public
service are ineligible. No returning officer may stand for the place
where he is commanded by writ from the Crown Office to hold an
election. A bankrupt is disqualified. He may be nominated, but if
elected he cannot sit.
But though all property qualifications have been abolished, the
aspirant for a seat in Parliament must have money in his purse,
or raise it from some other source. The expenses of the returning
officer for the provision of polling stations and the fee for his
official services were formerly paid by the candidates. If there was
no contest, the candidate on nomination paid £25. In the event of a
contest the charges were considerably higher. They ran in boroughs
from £100 up to £700, and in counties from £150 to £1,000, according
to the number of electors on the register, and were apportioned
equally between the candidates. As provided by the Representation of
the People Act, 1918, the returning officer’s expenses are now paid
by the Treasury. But each candidate must deposit with his nomination
paper a sum of £150, which is returned to him if he wins as soon
as he has taken the oath as a Member of Parliament, and even if he
loses, provided he obtains more than one-eighth of the votes polled.
In all other cases the deposit is, as the Act says, “forfeited to
His Majesty,” save in University elections, where it is retained by
the University. This provision was designed to discourage “freak”
candidatures. It costs more to lose than to win an election.
5
Polling at a General Election is held on the one day. It is the
ninth day after nomination day, as provided by the Representation
of the People Act, 1918. Before the day of polling a group of men
wait upon the returning officer of the constituency. They are
usually rate-collectors or other officials of the local municipal
bodies. Vested by the returning officer with his authority and
responsibilities, they are to represent him in the polling booths.
Each booth is in charge of a presiding officer, and he is allowed a
poll clerk for every 500, or part of 500, electors on his section
of the register of voters. The presiding officer and their clerks
must not have been employed in any capacity by any of the candidates
during a contest.
Each presiding officer and poll clerk signs a declaration in which
he undertakes to maintain and to aid in maintaining the secrecy of
the voting. They are also told that for any breach of faith in this
respect they are liable to six months’ imprisonment with hard labour.
More than that, another section of the Ballot Act is read by the
returning officer which states that if they supply a ballot paper to
any unauthorized person, or fraudulently put into the ballot box any
paper but the official ballot paper, or destroy any ballot paper, or
open, or in any way tamper with the ballot box, they are liable to
imprisonment for any term not exceeding two years. “I hope none of
you gentlemen will get it,” adds the returning officer, indulging in
the time-honoured joke of the occasion.
The returning officer may use as a polling booth, free of charge, the
rooms of any school which is in receipt of a parliamentary grant, or
any building maintained out of the local rates. Failing these, he
may hire any other place, with some important exceptions, such as an
inn or beerhouse—unless by consent of all the candidates given in
writing—or a church, chapel, or other place of public worship. The
polling booth must be opened at eight o’clock in the morning on the
day of the election. It is the duty of the presiding officer and his
clerks to be there at least a quarter of an hour earlier. The ballot
box—made of steel, enamelled in black, with a slot in the lid—is
already in the booth. The presiding officer finds inside the box the
ballot papers, also pencils, pens, blotting-paper, drawing pins,
red tape and sealing-wax, and copies of the Old and New Testament
for administering the oath should occasion for it arise. There are
also copies of so much of the register of voters as applies to the
district for which the polling booth is intended. He also finds
in the box that which is guarded with the most jealous care—the
official mark for the stamping of the ballot papers. The returning
officer is bound to keep the form of this stamp absolutely secret
until the morning of the poll. It must not be a stamp that has been
used at elections for the same constituency during the preceding
seven years. This official mark may consist of any device—a letter
of the alphabet, a cross, or a circle—which can be stamped upon the
ballot paper. No ballot paper without this identification is counted.
Owing to these precautions it is absolutely impossible for ballot
papers to be surreptitiously printed, marked in favour of one of the
candidates, and slipped into the ballot box as genuine votes. Then
the presiding officer shows the empty ballot box to those present
in the station in an official capacity, so that they can testify
that when the polling began there was nothing in it, and proceeds
to lock it and seal it in such a manner that it cannot again be
opened without breaking the seal. The slit of the ballot box must be
so constructed that the voting papers dropped through it cannot be
withdrawn.
All is now ready for the polling. In the booth are those only who are
authorized to be present. Each candidate is represented by a polling
agent to look after his interest. But the complete control of the
booth lies in the presiding officer, and there are constables present
to carry out his commands. He can have removed from the booth any
person who misconducts himself or who disputes his lawful orders. He
may in certain circumstances give a disorderly person into custody.
But he must be careful that any action he may take does not prevent a
person entitled to vote from voting.
At eight o’clock sharp the doors of the polling station are opened.
Usually a number of electors are waiting outside, some to compete
for the empty distinction of recording the first vote, and some
anxious to discharge the task or duty before going about the day’s
business. The official register sets forth the name, address, number,
and qualification of every man and woman in the district entitled
to vote. When the poll clerk is satisfied with the identity of the
applicant, the white ballot paper is stamped with the official mark,
back and front, and handed to the elector, and a short horizontal
line or tick is drawn against his name on the register to show that
he has voted. The ballot papers are made up like cheque-books, each
paper having a counterfoil, and are numbered consecutively on the
back. As the poll clerk gives a ballot paper to an elector he writes
on the counterfoil the elector’s number on the register. Thus the
vote of every elector can be traced should any circumstances arise to
make this necessary.
The voter, provided with the ballot paper, retires to a compartment
where, alone and aloof and screened from observation, he or she
places his or her two pencil strokes, the simple “X,” and that only,
in the space to the right of the name of the candidate by whom he
or she wishes to be represented in Parliament. Then, folding up the
ballot paper so as to conceal the mark, but leaving the official
stamp exposed in order to satisfy the presiding officer or the poll
clerk, by a cursory glance, that it is the genuine paper, the voter
drops it into the ballot box through the slit in the lid, and with
a pleasant sense of self-importance immediately quits the polling
station.
But the polling does not always proceed with this easy and monotonous
regularity. Not infrequently a boisterous elector enters to whom the
solemnity of the booth or the secrecy of the ballot makes no appeal.
“Your name and address, please,” says the poll clerk. “My name’s
Ted Lillywhite, and no mistake, and I live at 70 Carpenter Street,
and don’t you forget it,” answers the elector stiffly. He gets the
ballot paper, and without any attempt at concealment makes a big
sprawling cross opposite the name of Smith, and, as he drops the
paper with a flourish into the ballot box, cries: “There! I’ve voted
for Smith, good man and true, and I’d like all the world to know it.”
Another man comes in only to find that despite the vigilance of the
candidates’ polling agents—or, it may be, with the connivance of one
or other of them—someone has already voted in his name. The man is
asked on oath by the presiding officer if he is the person he claims
to be, and if he swears that he is, a pink ballot paper officially
known as a “tendered vote” is given him. The vote, however, is not
put into the ballot box, but is given to the presiding officer,
who places it in an envelope specially provided for the purpose.
All particulars of the voter—name, number on the register, and any
remarks the presiding officer may have to make—are entered on what
is termed the tendered votes list, which is delivered at the close
of the poll to the returning officer. There is also the clumsy voter
who spoils his ballot paper. The presiding officer may, if it be
proved to his satisfaction that the paper was inadvertently spoiled,
cancel it and supply the voter with another. There is the elector
who is blind, or has no hands, or is incapacitated by any physical
cause from marking the ballot paper himself. There is the elector who
declares his inability to read. There is also the elector who, being
a Jew, is precluded by his religious belief from marking his vote
himself should the polling be on a Saturday, which is his Sabbath.
These are dealt with alike. The presiding officer, in the presence
of the candidates’ agents, marks the ballot paper in accordance
with the wishes of the voter and places it in the ballot box. The
greatest problem of all that confronts the presiding officer is the
recording of the vote of a deaf and dumb elector who can neither read
nor write. A list of the votes so marked, and the reasons for so
marking them, must be kept by the presiding officer and supplied to
the returning officer. The presiding officer may also put questions
to ascertain whether a person who asks for a ballot paper has already
voted in other constituencies in which he is entitled to vote. A man
may vote by reason of a residence qualification in one constituency
and give one more vote in another constituency where he is registered
for a business premises qualification, or as a University elector. A
woman can vote in only one constituency where she is registered by
virtue of her own or her husband’s local government qualification,
but she can vote also at a University, if she is on its register.
The poll closes at eight or nine o’clock. Ballot papers cannot be
given out after that time. But any voters who have received papers
before the hour has struck may put their votes into the ballot
box. The presiding officer, in the presence of the agents of the
candidates, then stops up the slot of the ballot box and seals
it, so as to prevent the insertion of any more voting papers. The
ballot box, securely locked, bound in red tape and sealed, is then
brought by the presiding officer to the place appointed for the
counting of the votes, which is usually the town hall or county
hall, and is delivered up to the returning officer, together with a
statement in writing of the number of ballot papers supplied to the
polling station, and accounting for them under the heads of “used,”
“unused,” and “spoilt,” and also the counterfoils of the used ballot
papers, the unused ballot papers, the marked copies of the register
of voters, and the list of tendered votes, all of which had been
carefully made up in separate parcels and sealed before leaving the
polling station.