Guide 3 to NSW State Archives relating to Responsible Government - OCR - Flipbook - Page 231
A Guide to New South Wales State Archives relating to Responsible Government
• alphabetical list of polling-places and locality names showing
subdivision and Electorate within which each is situated, for the
General Election, 1965; the same for the General Election,
1968
• printed General Election for the Legislative Assembly
24 February 1968 statistical returns, prepared by the Electoral
Commissioner ] M McDonell
• Government Gazette of 21 October 1966 giving details of the
alterations of subdivisions and electorates which resulted from
the 1966 Redistribution of State Electoral Boundaries
• individual maps: of Electoral Districts, including Cessnock
Electoral District after the 1957 re-distribution; of country
electorates 1966 with 1961 boundaries also shown; showings
groups of electorates in Groups 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 as approved by
the Executive Council on 28 February 1968
• Government Gazette of 28 February 1968 including a
proclamation amending the Fifth Schedule of the Constitution
Act, 1902 relating to electorate allowances of Members of the
Legislative Assembly
• representations from various Members of the Legislative
Assembly for their electorate to be included in a different part
of Schedule 5, with follow-up reports and replies.
File 65/629A; Voting at State elections - postal and
absentee voting, 1958-66
Postal voting had been dispensed with by the McGirr government.
It was not until the mid-1960s that the system of postal voting in
State elections was extended so that fewer electors were
disenfranchised because of their absence from the electorate in
which they were registered.
CGS 12060,
File 65/629A
in [13/10828]
In August 1959 the situation in respect of voting in State elections
was that persons who within seven days of election day became
too ill at home to attend a polling booth were deprived of their
votes, and persons who were out of State or in uncontested
electorates and lived within five miles of a polling booth were
similarly treated; with no provision being made for those who
were overseas or who were on the high seas. Effectively,
thousands of people were denied the right to vote owing to
restrictions imposed on postal voting.
By 1962 the situation had not changed significantly. The only
persons entitled to receive a postal vote were those whose place
of living, as appearing on the electoral roll, was situated more
than five miles by the nearest practicable route from each and
every polling-place which would be open on polling day, in the
Electoral District for which they were enrolled.
A few years later postal voting was improved. The second reading
of the Parliamentary Electorates and Elections (Amendment) Act
took place in October 1965. The purposes of this Bill were: to
prohibit any elector standing as a candidate for more than one
electorate at the same election, or in elections held on the same
day; to abolish the system of electoral visitor voting; to
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State Records Authority of New South Wales
