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lestroyed if we do not make the amendment proposed by Senator Pearce.

Senator STANIFORTH SMITH (Western Australia).—I am sure the VicePresident of the Executive Council is as anxious as any of us that every facility, consistent with safety, should be given to electors to record their votes. Therefore, I cannot understand why he should be opposed to Senator Pearce's amendment, which would simplify the voting system. At present we have provided for direct voting, voting by post, and voters' certificates. If Senator Pearce's proposal were adopted we should have the direct vote, and voting by post. The system he proposes has already been adopted in various States, and not a single a single protest has been made against it. As Senator Keating mentioned the other day, the system provided in Tasmania is one by which fraud can be eliminated as effectively as in direct voting. Indeed, the very same system can be adopted as in the case of postal voting. If a person living in Melbourne happens to be at Bendigo, Ballarat, or Swan Hill on the day of the election he would, under Senator Pearce's proposal, be able to record his vote, which would be put in a Melbourne envelope and posted down to Melbourne. If it were found on an examination of the roll that the person in question had not voted in Melbourne the vote thus posted would be recorded. The secrecy of the ballot would be maintained, and the probability of fraud reduced to a minimun. If

there were a danger of personation under the system, I should be the first to vote against it. There would be, however, less danger of fraud than if the man voted direct, because his signature would be the most effective evidence against him. Another objection raised is that unnecessary delay would occur in counting the votes. We cannot get an official declaration of the poll until all the ballot-boxes are received at a certain place. While those boxes are being sent down the votes recorded under Senator Pearce's proposal could be forwarded to the places at which the names of the electors were registered. I have not yet heard any clear explanation of why Senator O'Connor objects to the system.

Senator O'CONNOR.-The difficulty is about identification. The electors on the roll live round about the polling place; but if a man votes at a polling place hundreds of miles away how are we to identify him?

Senator STANIFORTH SMITH.-In the first place it is impossible for two persons to vote by virtue of one name on the roll, because if a man has voted on the day of election, and another vote comes down by post in the name of that man, it cannot be recorded. In the second place there will be scrutineers, who probably will know the voter, or recognise his signature. Exactly the same objection could be raised against the certificate system. I, therefore, hope that Senator O'Connor will reconsider the matter, or devise some other system by which every man may go to the nearest polling booth and record his vote if he is too far away from the place where his name is registered.

Senator STEWART (Queensland). Some time ago when we were discussin another phase of this Bill, Senator O'Connor twitted certain honorable senators with being extremely conservative in their ideas. He reminded them of the opponents to the Reform Bill, who would not move until they were shifted. With reference to this particular clause, the honorable and learned senator himself has become allied with such conservatism. The object of our electoral law is to give every voter an opportunity to vote. Of course no law can be carried out without a certain limitation, but the elector's right to vote ought not to be circumscribed in a way that would hinder him from recording it. The Bill proposes to chain down the elector to his own particular polling place. In this respect it is tenfold more conservative than any State law. In most of the Queensland electorates we have ten or twenty polling places, but the elector can vote at any one of them so long as he votes within his electorate. But the Bill of the Government says that a man shall not vote away from his own polling place unless he arranges to vote by post, or gets a voter's certificate. Those conveniences, so far as concerns a large number of electors in the outlying portions of Australia, are delusive in the last degree. In the first place, a man has to write to the returning officer for a particular form, or has to fill up an application in the prescribed form himself. Does any one imagine that the ordinary elector is going to carry a copy of the Act about with him or to have a copy of the form in his possession? If he fills up the form, by the time it reaches the returning officer the elector may be a hundred miles away. Then the voter has to