Mr. McCRANEY:

The existing provision is that each enumerator, the day before nomination day, posts up two copies of the list in conspicuous places, one I think in the post office and another in a conspicuous place. There is no provision for the case of lists being torn down. That sometimes happens in rural districts. Lists disappear. They are posted on the outside of buildings. Has that point been covered so that the public will have before them continuously the lists? Under the new provision giving fifteen days for the posting up of the lists, there will he candidates definitely in the field before -any lists are available. There is no provision under the old law for the delivery of copies of the enumerators'

lists to candidates, because the candidates are nominated the day after the lists go up. The Secretary of State is providing that candidates shall be in the field 13 days before the lists go up. I ask him to provide that the enumerator in each polling division give a copy of the enumeration list to each of the candidates. Most of these lists are typewritten and a number of copies can easily be made.

Mr. McCRANEY:

Under the law as it now stands, lists of voters must be posted one day before nomination day, so that when the candidates are placed in the field there is a list of voters upon which to go. Under this Bill the lists will be posted up [DOT]only during the last fifteen days

4 p.m., of the twenty-eight days in which the candidates are in nomination, so that there will be thirteen days in which there will be no lists and during which candidates will be in the field. I suggest a further extension of that time. When candidates are in the field the lists ought to he available. Then who are the persons qualified to nominate a candidate for Parliament? They are persons who are on the enumeration list. Are you not going to change the whole basis of your nomination? To-day the candidate is nominated one week before election day, and he is nominated by so many qualified electors, that is those whose names have been posted up the day before in a public place.

Mr. McCRANEY:

In this case he would not be entitled to vote, because his name would not be on the enumerator's list.

Mr. McCRANEY:

In that case he would have to examine into the qualification of every man whose name appeared on the nomination paper. Formerly there was no occasion for that because the enumeration list was posted up, and that was prima facie evidence-

Mr. McCRANEY:

I have not had any , experience of the tied ballot since the provincial election of 1905, and my recollections of it may be somewhat at fault, but in Saskatchewan we had the same provision at that time, I suppose, as they had in Alberta, because both elections were being run under the same law. My recollection of it is that any person challenged would have his ballot put in an envelope and it would be laid on one side as a tied ballot. Before the voter left the polling booth he would be handed an appointment by the deputy returning officer naming an hour within a couple of days when he was to appear before one of two Justices of the peace, near the place of polling, and the right of the voter would then he tried out.

I understand from what the Secretary of State says that while this law introduces the tied ballot there is no local tribunal and everything is held up pending a recount. I attended some local tribunals in connection with the elections of 1905. There are always a number of votes tied up, but these cases are very often quickly settled: to the satisfaction

of all parties before a Justice of the Peace, without any need for referring them to a judge. That is t-o say, the fact that there is the right of examination and of investigation will obviate the necessity of taking an appeal from the local tribunals to the judge. At the last election I had a county 130 miles long and 60 miles wide, with 147 polling places, and nearly 10,000 votes were cast. Under such a system as this Bill provides it would surprise me very much if there were not at least ten per cent of the ballots tied up. The very cumbrous machinery which makes it so difficult for a person whose ballot is tied, and who lives sixty or seventy miles away from a judicial centre, is a great inducement to an opponent to tie up a vote. If there was a local tribunal where both sides could get information, it would settle a great deal of that. I do not like these tied ballots at all, and

the Secretary of State will find that our elections in the West are going to get into a terrible mess if there are one or two thousand votes-and I venture to say that that will occur-which will have to came before the judge for trial. Imagine the examination of several hundreds of people, even in a judicial matter, with other witnesses possibly coming in.