PRELIMINARY. 1. This Act shall come into operation on the First Day of January, 1892. 2. In this act the term "Public meeting " shall mean any meeting open, without ticket, to all electors in the constituency in which the meeting is held: "Period of election" shall mean the period from the date of the issue of the writ by the Clerk of the Crown or the Speaker to the date of the declaration of the poll: "Returning officer" shall include deputy returning officer: "Public funds" shall include both national and local funds: "Person" shall mean a man or woman of the age of twenty-one years or more: "Registration Day" shall mean the 15th day of March, June, September, or December, respectively: "Qualifying Period" shall mean four weeks. Under the existing law, in Acts of Parliament the masculine pronoun includes the feminine. PART I. 3. Every person over twenty-one years of age, who has continuously resided in or occupied the same premises for the space of four weeks next previous to any registration day, or has during that time resided in or occupied different premises in the same constituency in immediate succession, shall, with the exceptions hereinafter provided, be entitled to be registered as an elector, and when and so long as so registered, to vote at all elections taking place in the constituency in which the said premises are situated. Provided also that none of the persons hereinafter mentioned shall be entitled to be registered as electors, namely: Aliens; Persons who have been declared by legal process to be of unsound mind; Persons actually undergoing a sentence of imprisonment or penal servitude; or Persons scheduled for corrupt or illegal practices. In view of the future "ending" of the House of Lords, Peers of Parliament are given the franchise like other citizens. The law regulating the Naturalization of Aliens should be simplified and the expense reduced. The cost of a Letter of Naturalization is now £5, having been raised from £1 to that amount by the Home Secretary in 1886. A statutory declaration should be sufficient. 4. No person shall be registered as an elector who has not tisfied the conditions herein specified; but it shall be presumed, 'he absence of evidence to the contrary, that every adult person ying the condition as to occupation or residence, is qualified registered as an elector. SINCE the time of the Chartist agitation, no attempt has been made to formulate a thorough scheme for the reform of the laws regulating our Electoral System, if the confused, inconsistent, and often unintelligible mass of Acts of Parliament on the Statute Book can be dignified by such a name. From the Statute of Edward I., establishing freedom of election, down to the County Electors' Act (1888), there have been between one hundred and fifty and one hundred and sixty Acts to regulate the Franchise, Registration of Electors, and Procedure at Elections, etc.; of which, no less than one hundred and sixteen have been enacted since the passing of the Reform Act of 1832-a measure intended by Lord John Russell to settle finally the question of Reform. A With the single exception of the Corrupt and Illegal Practices Act (1883), no attempt has been made to codify any section of Electoral Law. One Act of Parliament nullifies another, and a superstitious reverence for antiquated modes of draughtmanship has only made confusion worse confounded. vote is given to every male householder, only to be taken away from him by a cumbrous and iniquitous system of registration, with an arbitrary term of qualification, and an intentionally complex arrangement of claim, objection, and revision. It is often said that the points of the People's Charter have been embodied in English law; but, as a matter of fact, the Ballot alone has been adopted in its simple entirety. The Suffrage has been considerably lowered, and some approach has been made to the establishment of Equal Electoral Districts, but nothing whatever has been done with regard to the Payment of Members and the Duration of Parliaments. The abolition of a Property Qualification for Members has been merely a nominal reform, and can only 6 rendered effective by Payment of Election Expenses. In the following draft bill an attempt has been made to put into practicable legal shape the aspirations of advanced political reformers. Its provisions include the following points : ADULT SUFFRAGE. MINIMUM RESIDENTIAL QUALIFICA TIONS. EFFICIENT QUARTERLY REGISTRA TION BY PAID OFFICERS. SECOND BALLOT. SIMULTANEOUS ELECTIONS. ABSOLUTE SECRECY OF THE BALLOT. EXTENSION OF THE HOURS OF POLL- RESTRICTION ON USE OF CONVEY- OF ALL ELECTION EX- To make a complete Reform Bill, provision should also be made for the establishment of Equal Electoral Districts, automatically re-adjusted according to population after every census; the consolidation of the eighty-five statutes dealing with the Disqualification of Candidates, and of the thirty-one dealing with the procedure at an election; the further simplification and strengthening of the law relating to Corrupt and Illegal Practices; and the Abolition of the House of Lords. Until the electorate consists of the whole adult population, and perfect freedom of choice of members, combined with the fullest control over their legislative action, has been secured through Payment of Members and their election expenses, and the Second Ballot, the people will be seriously handicapped in the promotion and enactment of those measures of social reform, which will ultimately result in the socialization of industry and the establishment of the Commonwealth on a co-operative basis, for which end alone political reform is of any value. PRELIMINARY. 1. This Act shall come into operation on the First Day of January, 1892. 2. In this act the term "Public meeting" shall mean any meeting open, without ticket, to all electors in the constituency in which the meeting is held: "Period of election" shall mean the period from the date of the issue of the writ by the Clerk of the Crown or the Speaker to the date of the declaration of the poll: 'Returning officer" shall include deputy returning officer: "Public funds" shall include both national and local funds: "Person" shall mean a man or woman of the age of twenty-one years or more: "Registration Day" shall mean the 15th day of March, June, September, or December, respectively: "Qualifying Period" shall mean four weeks. Under the existing law, in Acts of Parliament the masculine pronoun includes the feminine. PART I. Adult Suffrage. 3. Every person over twenty-one years of age, who has continuously resided in or occupied the same premises for the space of four weeks next previous to any registration day, or has during that time resided in or occupied different premises in the same constituency in immediate succession, shall, with the exceptions hereinafter provided, be entitled to be registered as an elector, and when and so long as so registered, to vote at all elections taking place in the constituency in which the said premises are situated. Provided also that none of the persons hereinafter mentioned shall be entitled to be registered as electors, namely: Aliens ; Persons actually undergoing a sentence of imprisonment or Persons scheduled for corrupt or illegal practices. In view of the future "ending" of the House of Lords, Peers of Parliament are given the franchise like other citizens. The law regulating the Naturalization of Aliens should be simplified and the expense reduced. The cost of a Letter of Naturalization is now £5, having been raised from £1 to that amount by the Home Secretary in 1886. A statutory declaration should be sufficient. 4. No person shall be registered as an elector who has not satisfied the conditions herein specified; but it shall be presumed, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, that every adult person satisfying the condition as to occupation or residence, is qualified to be registered as an elector. 5. No person shall be disqualified from being registered as an elector by reason of being a peer of Parliament, or a woman, or a woman under coverture, or a person in receipt of parochial relief, or a member of Her Majesty's military or naval forces; nor on the ground that any rates due in respect of the premises in which he resides are unpaid. 6. Any person registered or entitled to be registered as an elector may be a candidate at any election, whether parliamentary or otherwise, and, if elected, shall be entitled to sit; provided that no person shall be entitled to sit in both Houses of Parliament. This section makes women eligible for membership of all representative bodies, and removes the existing disqualification of clergymen for membership of the House of Commons. Any genuinely Democratic bill must sweep away, as is herein proposed, the whole existing tangle of complicated franchises, making simple residence for the briefest practicable period the basis of the qualification. Such a measure would add, not one million but nearer three millions of adult men to the registers, to say nothing of the nine millions of adult women. franchise should apply to all elections, whether for Parliament or any local public body. The creation of "faggot votes" would be impossible, and duplicate votes would be prevented (see section 23). The new The number of electors now registered is 6,067,133 (H.C. 368 of 1890), but over 250,000 of these are duplicate registrations, some men having fifteen or more constituencies. The number of adult men in the kingdom is about 8,500,000, the estimated population in 1890 being 38,200,000, and the percentage of males over 21 as ascertained by the last census being 22.3. Accordingly, over two and a half millions of adult men are at present excluded from citizenship. The "Registration Bill" promised by the official Liberal leaders is expected by Mr. Gladstone to raise the number of the electorate to seven millions" (see his article in Lloyd's News, 4th May, 1890, republished under the title of "Rights and Responsibilities of Labour," office of Lloyd's Weekly News, London. One penny). This timid and inconsistent proposal, which is denounced by Lord Hartington as revolutionary, would still leave over one and a half million adult men without the elementary right of citizenship. The existing qualifications of Parliamentary electors, which are contained in thirty-eight statutes, are seven in number, four being peculiar to counties, and three common to both counties and boroughs : Counties. 1. A freehold estate of 40s. or upwards. 2. A copyhold estate of £5 annual value. 3. A leasehold for either twenty years of £50, or sixty years of £5 annual value. 4. An occupation of lands or tenements at a rental of £50 or upwards. Counties and Boroughs. 1. The occupation of land or premises of the clear annual value of £10. 2. The occupation of a dwelling-house. 3. The occupation of lodgings of an annual value, if let unfurnished, of £10. There are also 32,000 liverymen and freemen in boroughs who are electors under qualifications that will die out. Manhood, or what is incorrectly_called Universal Suffrage, prevails in France, Germany, Spain, most of the United States, New South Wales, South Australia, and New Zealand. The State of Wyoming alone enjoys true Universal Suffrage. In Austria, women who own property to which the franchise attaches may vote, the payment of certain taxes being the chief qualification. PART II. Efficient Quarterly Registration of Electors. 7. The county council in every county shall appoint annually a county registration officer, who shall also be the returning officer at all parliamentary elections, under 38 & 39 Vict., c. 84, for all the constituencies in such county, and shall have power to appoint deputy returning officers. 8. Where a parish has a population according to the last census exceeding 500 in number, and (with the exception of the overseers) there is no vestry clerk or other officer whose duty it is to make out the lists of voters therein, the vestry shall appoint annually, before the 1st day of June, a local registration officer, whose duty it shall be to give the notices under the Registration Acts, and to prepare the lists of voters, claims, and objections for such parish, and do all other acts hereinafter provided for in respect of registration. The local registration officer shall be paid out of the county fund such a sum as may be approved by the Local Government Board. If in any such parish no local registration officer shall have been appointed by the 1st of June in any year, it shall be the duty of the overseers to report the fact to the county registration officer, who shall (with or without such report) immediately appoint a local registration officer for the said parish, with such remuneration, to be paid out of the county fund, as may be approved by the Local Government Board. 9. The overseers of any parish for which a local registration officer has not been appointed, may employ such persons as may be necessary for the purpose of serving notices, collecting returns, making enquiries, and otherwise aiding them in performing the duties hereinafter provided for in respect of registration. 10. On or before the 20th day of December, March, June, and September in every year, the person who is rated for cach tenement shall furnish the local registration officer in every parish with a list of the adult men and women who have resided in the tenement for the period of four weeks next preceding the 15th day of December, March, June, and September in that year. Any person who shall refuse or negligently omit to make the return, or wilfully or negligently make a false or inaccurate return, may be prosecuted by the county registration officer, or by any other person, and shall be liable upon summary conviction thereof, to a fine not exceeding £5 for the first offence, and £10 for the second or any subsequent offence. 11. The local registration officer in every parish shall, on or before the last day in December in every year, make out a list of persons qualified to be registered as electors, alphabetically arranged, and another list in which the names shall be arranged in the same order in which their places of residence appear in the rate book for the parish in which the premises are situate. 12. The local registration officer in every parish shall, on or before the last day in March, June, and September in every year, |