§ Mr. GILBERTasked the President of the Local Government Board whether he can issue an order to registration officers that, on the new registers now being made up, there shall not be two lists of absent service voters published with two different polling numbers; and whether he can arrange that there shall only be the one list of absent voters, and that the names shall be omitted from the main list, where the names and duplicate numbers only complicate all elections held on these registers?
§ Major ASTORThe hon. Member appears to be under a misapprehension with respect to the form of the absent voters' list for the second register. There will be only one list for each constituency. The names of the absent voters who were on the list for the first register will appear first in the new list, and the new names will be entered after those names and be numbered consecutively with them. This arrangement has been adopted for the purpose of avoiding the great labour and difficulty which would be entailed upon the Army record officer if the names of absent voters in the first and second lists were numbered differently.
The absent voters' list is a list of the persons who, being on the register, are entitled to vote as absent voters. It is not permissible under the Act to remove their names from the register. They are then distinguished not by duplicate numbers, but by the addition of a letter which indicates that they are entered on the absent voters' list.