Guidance for Returning Officers administering a Scottish Parliament election

You must issue postal votes to electors as soon as is practicable.1 In practice this means at any time after the details to be printed on the ballot papers have been confirmed, i.e. after the deadline for withdrawals, which is 4pm 23 working days before polling day.2

The Convenor of the EMB may direct or recommend when the first issue of postal votes is dispatched to electors.3

The early dispatch of postal votes will maximise the time available for electors – especially for those that need to be sent overseas and for service voters – to receive, complete and return their postal vote. For more information see our guidance on issuing and distributing postal votes. 

You may only issue a postal vote to someone who has already been added to the register. The ERO is required to publish two interim election notices of alteration before publishing the final election notice of alteration on the fifth working day before the poll.4 This supports the dispatch of postal votes at an early stage in the timetable to those electors who have applied to register close to the registration deadline. For more information see our guidance for EROs on election notices of alteration.  

The ERO will produce the postal voters list and the proxy voters list, and you will need these lists as soon as possible after the publication of the first interim election notice of alteration to include these electors in the initial dispatch of postal votes. This notice must be published on the day of the deadline for nominations.5

You will also need to liaise with the ERO to obtain any subsequent updates once the second interim election notice of alteration and the final election notice of alteration have been published.

For more information on interim notices of alteration see our guidance for EROs. 

Our template election timetable for Scottish Parliament elections also includes the relevant publication dates for these notices. 

You can find the template election timetable in the absent voting section of our resource page.

Deadlines for absent voting applications and requests to change existing arrangements

The deadline for new postal and postal proxy applications is 5pm, 11 working days before polling day.6 This is also the deadline:

• to cancel existing postal votes
• for electors to make changes (i.e. amending delivery address) to existing absent vote (i.e. postal proxy and postal proxy) arrangements. 

If, however, an elector is a postal voter and has already returned their postal ballot paper(s), they cannot make changes after that time, even if this is before 5pm 11 working days before polling day.7

The deadline for new proxy applications (not postal proxy), excluding emergency proxy applications, is 5pm, 6 working days before polling day.8

The deadline for emergency proxy applications is 5pm on polling day.9 For more information see our guidance on voting by emergency proxy.

The ERO will provide you with the final lists of absent voters, i.e. the list of postal voters, the list of postal proxy voters and the list of proxies, after the deadline for applications has passed. 

Where a completed registration application is made by the deadline but the applicant’s identity cannot be verified against DWP records or through local data matching, the ERO has until the determination deadline, which is 6 working days before the poll, to receive the required evidence from the applicant under the exceptions process and make a determination.

An absent vote cannot be granted until the registration application has been positively determined. The postal vote will then need to be dispatched, and the voter will need to receive, complete and return their postal vote by 10pm on polling day.