What we are campaigning for
Voting Mechanisms
Learn about the issue of Full Participatory Voting Mechanisms
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The issue:
Failure by the UK Government to Provide its Overseas voters with a secure and timely voting
mechanism.
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The UK Government still expects each local authority to handle overseas voting by post.
After the close of nominations, and then also after a local authority has printed the ballot papers and prepared the voting envelopes, there is barely a two-week period to get the postal ballots out to the voters and for the recipients to return them.
The international postal system combined with that of many individual countries, will simply not deliver the ballot paper to the voter and back to the returning officer before the election is over.
This forces people to ask other people to complete their ballot for them by Proxy.
This is complicated to arrange, for example they may not know of anyone still living in his former constituency and in arranging a proxy within the UK which is allowed this in turn may need to be a postal proxy vote.
Ultimately, the Overseas voter cannot be sure whether the Proxy has actually voted and indeed there is no certainly as to how their Proxy has voted.
What we say:
The UK Government must be encouraged to provide a certain and secret voting mechanism in line with what almost all outer countries provide for their citizens.
It could be by using its embassies overseas to collect and return ballot papers, it could allow overseas citizens to download ballot papers, it could also enable automatic voter registration at passport renewal.
Relying on international post (irrespective of timelines) and proxy voting does not in itself enable fair voting for overseas citizens.
A separate area of our focus, but by far the best solution is to introduce constituencies for overseas voters.
What we are doing:
We have developed a policy which details our findings and proposal to improve the current situation. You can download and read the full document, which we are sharing and discussing with MPs, Lords and Civil Servants.
We are working with other stakeholders and partners around the world to test the systems in place and report on our findings.