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'Voting by post'
Mr Boothby suggests a form of voting through the post to the 1861 House of
Assembly Select Committee. (p9-10). In some Scandinavian countries postal/absent
voting already existed, but not in the context of the secret/Australian ballot.
As you can see, his plan was for eleven (country) electorates to have postal
voting and only postal voting. Also, this was three years after the move
from 'crossing out names' to 'box next to
names'. He and everyone else thought
it a bit of a disaster (lots of informal votes), and so his plan, in line with his suggestions for elections in
general, involved a return to crossing out names.
It would be almost 30 years before postal voting would be put into
practice; when it did, it was another SA first.
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