§ Sir W. Smithersasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department, in view of the fact that many Servicemen at home and abroad did not receive their ballot papers for the General Election, what steps he took to ensure delivery; and what consultations there were between his Department and the Postmaster-General when the machinery of the scheme was under consideration.
§ Mr. EdeThe G.P.O. were consulted at all stages in framing and implementing the postal voting procedure for Service voters in operation at the General Election, and I am informed by my Noble Friend the Postmaster-General that only a small fraction of effective postal voting applications did not result in a ballot paper being received by the applicant. A number of postal voting applications were, however, ineffective, either because the applicant was not entered on the Service register, or because a postal voting application was incorrectly completed, with the consequence that the name of a person making an application could not be identified with his entry in the Service register.