Page:Thomas Hare - The Election of Representatives, parliamentary and municipal.djvu/229

 tnencies, have been enabled to make their returns of members; and in those places it will be only the excess of, or unappropriated, voting papers that will be transmitted to the registrars. The completed returns will have greatly reduced the aggregate number of voting papers of which the results are undetermined,—the number unappropriated, however, would be still large. In addition to these there would be the whole of the votes given in the smaller constituencies, which have not singly sufficient electors to make up a quota, and in others, where a sufficient number had not concurred in doing so.

A large amount of clerical or mechanical labour will, of course, be necessary in dealing with the mass of documents thus brought to the offices of the registrars, and an extensive space must necessarily be occupied as office room for the few days during which the sorting and appropriation of the voting papers are in progress; but neither will probably be greater than is employed daily at the General Post-office.

The registrars will have a small permanent establishment of experienced clerks attached to their several offices. They will, on the occasion of a general election, have the assistance of the poll-clerks from the local constituencies, by whom the lists are brought from the returning officers, and of whom all the more efficient may be retained during the business of the appropriation of votes. Of these clerks there will be 400 or 500, or more. They may be further assisted by a sufficient number of clerks of character and experience, permitted to attend, at extra remuneration, for two or three days, from other public offices. The services of the several classes of clerks thus employed will be paid from the "Registrars' Fund."

At the point to which the election is now supposed to have reached, the registrars have before them the certificates of the various returning officers, and the voting papers which have accompanied them. Their duties, and the