The Law and Practice of Election Committees; Being the Completion of a Manual of Parliamentary Election Law (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: a ballot, was of course likely to have a preponderance in the committee; and the expedient of chance did not, under such circumstances, operate as a sufficient check to party spirit, in the appointment of election committees. Partiality and incompetence were indeed very generally complained of in the constitution of committees appointed in this manner.?On the day appointed for taking into consideration an election petition, one hundred members being present, f the petitioners, their counsel or agents, and the counsel or agents of the sitting members, were ordered to attend at the bar of the House, the door of the House being thereupon locked, and no member suffered to enter or depart from the House until the parties should have been directed to withdraw. The order of the day having then been read, the names of all the members of the House, written or printed on distinct pieces of paper, of nearly the same size, and folded up in the same manner, were put into six glasses, placed on the table for that purpose, and the clerk or clerk-assistant publicly drew the papers, and delivered them to the Speaker to read to the House, which he continued to do till thirty-three names of members then present had been drawn. The parties then retired from the House, t together with the clerk appointed to attend the committee, and who presented a list of the thirty-three members to each of the parties, who thereupon withdrew to separate places, for a few minutes, to consider which should be the eleven names which it might be expedient to strike off. Having determined upon them, the two parties met in the presence of the committee-clerk, and commenced the process, ?quaintly but significantly called knocking out the brains of the committee, of reducing the thirty-three to eleven names; the petition...