Page:Representation of the Peoples Act 1918 (ukpga 19180064).pdf/19

1918. be discharged by the registration officer as acting returning officer, and the acting returning officer shall have all the powers, duties, rights and liabilities of the returning officer under any enactments relating to parliamentary elections, and those enactments (including this Act) shall have effect accordingly and the acting returning officer shall have power to appoint deputies.

This section shall not apply to any duties which the returning officer reserves to himself and undertakes to perform in person.

Any appointment of a deputy by the acting returning officer shall be subject to the approval of the Local Government Board.

A returning officer at a parliamentary election shall not, if all his duties are discharged by the acting returning officer, be disqualified by reason of being returning officer for being a candidate at the election.

Division of constituency into polling districts and appointment of polling places.

31.—(1) It shall be the duty of the council whose clerk of is the registration officer or any constituency or by whom the registration officer is appointed, as occasion requires, to divide district, and the constituency in to polling districts, and to appoint polling places for the polling districts, in such manner as to give to all electors in the constituency such reasonable facilities for voting as are practicable in the circumstances:

Provided that, before dividing any constituency in the administrative county of London into polling districts, the authority therefore shall send a draft of any scheme for that purpose to the London County Council, and shall take into consideration any representations made to them by that Council.

(2) If a local authority, or not less than thirty electors, in a constituency make a representation to the Local Government Board that the polling districts or polling places do not meet the reasonable requirements of the electors in the constituency, or any body of electors, the Local Government Board shall consider the representation, and may, if they think fit, direct the council whose duty it is to divide the constituency into polling districts to make such alterations as the Board think necessary in the circumstances, and if the council fail to make those alterations within a month after the direction is given may themselves make the alterations, and any alterations so made shall have effect as if they had been made by the council.

In this provision the expression "local authority" means as respects any constituency the council of any county, borough, urban or rural district, or parish wholly or partly situate in the constituency or the parish meeting of any parish so situate where there is no parish council.

(3) On the exercise of any powers given by this section the council by whom the powers are exercised shall send to the Local Government Board a report, and publish in the constituency a notice, showing the boundaries of any polling d1stncts or the situation of any polling places constituted as a result of the exercise of the power.