Big New Election Task Ahead In NG

New Guinea electoral officers will require at least 12 months’ preparation for the elections of February, 1968. This means the new composition of the House, and new electoral boundaries, need to be finalised by next February.

The common rolls for Papua-New Guinea’s one million electors will all have to be revised. This is a gigantic task, but fortunately not as large as the original compilation of the rolls for the 1964 elections as officers then had no rolls to work on.

In Australia it is an offence for voters not to inform electoral officers of their change of address, but this system has not been adopted in the territory because of the impossibility of getting unsophisticated electors to co-operate. Special patrols will, as before, have to check each electoral district, and in addition without doubt thousands of To r n?!n tercd VO ! ers J V U stiU turn up on election day. In the 1964 elections 18,000 voters had their names put on the roll at the polling booths.

Only one New Guinea electoral roll has been revised since 1964, that of Kaindi where there was a by-election in August, following the death of the sitting member Bill Bloomfield.