via Local Governnu nt \Ireland) Act, 1919.
representation, or fully meet the requirements of the Statute, and legal proceedings wrere instituted in the High Court (Rex (Hunter) v.
the Local Government Board), wuth a view to having the Order quashed.
Upon the hearing of the case, the Court gave judgment against the prosecutor with costs, holding that our Order on its face wras in compliance and did not conflict with any of the provisions of the Statute and was not subject to certiorari.
In the aj)pendix to this Report will be found a summarised statement of the several electoral areas which were constituted under the Act.
The Act of 1919 did not impose, in terms, on us any special duty with respect to administrative work in carrying out the elections beyond the making of such Orders as might appear to us necessary or proper for giving full effect to the Act ; including Orders prescribing the method of voting and transferring and counting votes and the duties of returning officers in connection therewith, adapting any of the provisions of the Local Govern¬ ment (Ireland) Act, 1898, or Orders in Council made thereunder, or of any other enactment, so as to bring them into conformity with the provisions of the Act of 1919, and removing any diffi¬ culty which might arise as to the holding of the first triennial elections.
The application of the principle of Proportional Representation to local elections being a complete departure from the compara¬ tively simple practice which hitherto prevailed, and the methods of voting and the counting of the votes to which the individual candidates are entitled under the new system being somewhat intricate, we conceived it to be the intention of Parliament that we should administer the Act generally, including the affording to the local officers who would be engaged in the conduct of the elections such instruction as would enable them to carry out their duties in a satisfactory manner.
In this connection, our first step was to familiarise the several local authorities with the rules governing the application of the principle of Pro¬ portional Representation, and these we embodied in an Order which we made on the 2nd August, 1919, entitled The Pro¬ portional Representation (Ireland) Order, 1919 Later we found it necessary to make adaptations, alterations.
and exceptions in certain provisions of the Ballot Act, 1872, the Municipal Corporations Act, 1882, and the Municipal Elections (Corrupt and Illegal Practices) Act, 1884, as embodied in previous election orders made by us ; and upon full consideration of the matter, we came to the conclusion that if we issued a compre¬ hensive statement of the law in codified form, covering the entire procedure in regard to elections, it would tend materially to
