Hi there,
You will likely find it is the same person, it is the same street address on both
. You will also find that the 1913 NSW Electoral Rolls are in hardcopy, so not just CD and not just fische, but also hardcopy. So the fische was imaged off the hardcopy and the CD is basically the pdfs of the hardcopy, with OCR for the pdf search engine. You can also find the 1913 NSW Electoral Roll as a database at Find My Past.
Yes, Neil's explanation is logical, (when people move) and there's plenty of examples to support that explanation. It is important to remember that the system in that era was very much a paper based clerical admin system. So, from the Electoral Office's view, it was very important to ADD the new enrolments at the new address as promptly as possible, and then basically rely on the elector to remember to inform that they had left (via the Post Office !) their previous address (so after an election, the polling clerks and returning officers for the electorate could check, see who had not voted in respect of that address, and then determine why not ..... moved address was the usual reason.)
You also need to establish if you are looking at a New South Wales Electoral Roll, or a Commonwealth Electoral Roll. (or another roll eg local government/municipal/shire/city) . The NSW Electoral Roll is prepared for the NSW parliamentary elections. This is different from the Commonwealth of Australia parliamentary elections.
There's eight jurisdictions in Australia. Back in 1913 there were six. So before Australia was constituted as a federation (this occurred in 1901) there were six colonies, each with their own parliament. Those six parliaments continue to this day, and it is unlikely there will be any initiative to abolish this. Federation introduced a further Parliament, that of the Commonwealth of Australia. Each of the six colonies (now known as states) retain (to this day) their own sovereign constitutional roles/duties etc to the state that they govern. To those six states there are now two territories with parliaments, and there's also the Federal Parliament, the one that sits in Canberra.
So there's a lot of electoral rolls. In New South Wales, since the 1850s, there have been 'divisions' geographical/population based ELECTORATES and within each electorate there are polling places, at which the electors go, on election day, and have their name crossed off and are handed ballot slips to cast their ballot (vote), for the person to represent that 'division' / 'electorate' in the respective parliament.
Hope this info helps explain, and is not clouding the issue for you, as the street address is the same in each version.
Basically from federation, and in general terms, (there are exceptions, varying dates etc) to be eligible to enrol to vote you needed to be a) aged 21 years and over and b) a British subject either by birth or by naturalisation and c) resident at that address. So, you are simply looking at a document that gives you the federal electoral details and the state electoral details. You will see that two persons with surname Palmer are enrolled for that address for Commonwealth election and only one for state election. I will look up the dates of those elections and post further shortly.
Cheers, JM (edited to make better sense, and include relevant info, also please see my next post)
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Topic: 1913 NSW Electoral Roll (Read 2502 times)