CHAPTER III
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.