Parliamentary Elections Act 1695

The Parliamentary Elections Act 1695 (7 & 8 Will. 3. c. 25) was an Act of the Parliament of England regulating elections to the English House of Commons.

Provisions

Section 3 of the Act required that an election to a county constituency had to take place at the county court, and that the court had to be held at the place where it had most often been held in the preceding forty years (in effect, at the county town). This was to prevent an electoral abuse where the county sheriff held the election at a place more convenient for voters favourable to one of the candidates.

Section 6 sought to prevent faggot voters by requiring that a voter's forty shilling freehold was a bona fide holding and not a temporary conveyance.

Section 7 established the minimum voting age and age of candidacy as 21, which was the age of majority under common law. Underage MPs were seldom unseated before the Reform Act 1832: Viscount Jocelyn was 18 in 1806.^[1][2]

Section 8 provided that polling in Yorkshire, previously begun on a Monday, should instead begin on Wednesday. This was from a sabbatarian desire to prevent voters travelling on Sunday to the polling place.

Section 9 provided that the poll for Hampshire would be taken first at Winchester and then, after an adjournment, at Newport for the convenience of voters on the Isle of Wight.

Repeal

Some of the Act was implicitly repealed by the Reform Act 1832.

The whole Act except section 7 was, and in section 7 the words from the beginning of the section to "any future parliament" where those words first occurred were, repealed by section 80(7) of, and Schedule 13 to, the Representation of the People Act 1948.

Section 7 was repealed by sections 17(7)(a) and 74(2) of, and Schedule 2 to, the Electoral Administration Act 2006.

The whole Act was repealed for the Republic of Ireland by the Electoral Act 1963.^[3]

Footnotes

References

• John Raithby, ed. (1820). "An Act for the further regulating Elections of Members to serve in Parliament and for the preventing irregular Proceedings of Sheriffs and other Officers in the electing and returning such Members.". William III, 1695-6: An Act for the further regulating Elections of Members to serve in Parliament and for the preventing irregular Proceedings of Sheriffs and other Officers... [Chapter XXV. Rot. Parl. 7 & 8 Gul. III. P. 5. N. 11.] | British History Online. Statutes of the Realm. Vol. 7: 1695-1701. History of Parliament Trust. pp. 109–111.
• Halsbury's Statutes

External links

• The Parliamentary Elections Act 1695, as amended, from Legislation.gov.uk.
• Chapter XXV. Rot. Parl. 7 & 8 Gul. III. p. 5. n. 11. as originally enacted, from History of Parliament Trust

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