Guidance for Returning Officers administering a Scottish Parliament election

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Planning for postal vote opening

Number and timing of postal vote opening sessions

As part of your planning, you will need to identify the number of postal vote opening sessions that you think you will require and when these should be held and make arrangements for these as necessary.

The number of postal vote opening sessions you will require will depend largely on the total number of postal voters that you have and your estimated turnout of postal voters. For more considerations see our guidance on planning for the delivery of key processes.

Your first opening session should be held within a couple of days of your first issue. Even if you have not received a high number of returned postal votes by then, you should still conduct a session at that time and take the opportunity to test your equipment and assess your workflows under real conditions. 

After this first session you should gauge whether your estimate of the number of postal vote opening sessions required is sufficient or whether you need to revise it.

Nothing prevents the opening of postal votes being carried out on a Saturday, Sunday or bank holiday, and indeed you may wish to consider doing so, particularly if additional postal vote opening sessions are found to be required.

You must give each constituency candidate, individual regional candidate and the election agent for each registered party standing in the regional contest at least 48 hours’ notice, in writing, of the time and location of each opening session and of the maximum number of postal voting agents that may be appointed to attend the opening of postal votes.1

Who can attend the opening of postal votes?

The following people are entitled to attend the opening of postal votes:2  

  • you and your staff
  • the RRO and their staff
  • constituency candidates 
  • constituency candidates’ election agent or any person appointed by a candidate to attend in the election agent's place
  • individual regional candidates 
  • individual regional candidates’ election agent or any person appointed by a candidate to attend in the election agent's place
  • the election agent for a registered party standing nominated in the regional election, or the Nominating Officer of that party or someone authorised to attend in place of the Nominating Officer 
  • postal voting agents
  • Electoral Commission representatives
  • accredited observers

The postal vote opening process should be transparent and all those entitled to attend are able to clearly view the whole process. You could hand out copies of your layout plan to assist those present to follow what is happening, where and when. 

You should provide anyone attending with information on the processes you are going to follow. This can be a verbal explanation or through the provision of written guidance notes. 

You should also inform candidates, election agents and postal voting agents of the process to be followed should they wish to object to the rejection of a postal voting statement. For more information see our guidance on checking personal identifiers.

Everyone attending a postal vote opening session, including your staff, must:3

  • be provided with a copy of the secrecy requirements 
  • maintain the secrecy of voting

You can find the postal voting secrecy requirements in the absent voting section of our resource page.

You must take proper precautions for preventing any person from seeing the votes made on the ballot papers.4 Throughout the opening sessions you must keep the ballot papers face down. There may be occasions when the front of a ballot paper becomes visible. It is an offence for anyone to:5

  • to attempt to ascertain the candidate or the registered party for whom any vote is given on any particular ballot paper
  • or communicate any such information obtained at those proceedings.

Equipment

You should also consider what other equipment you will require at the opening of postal votes, and ensure that it is in place and tested in advance. This should include:

  • scanners
  • extension leads
  • printer
  • projector and screen
  • laptops and/or computers
  • rejected stamp and pad
  • assorted stationery

If, as CRO, you are responsible for a constituency that crosses local council boundaries you should consider what impact this will have on your processes and whether you want to delegate some of your functions to a senior officer at the other council(s). 

You will need to plan for how you will carry out the verification of absent vote identifiers on returned postal voting statements across the constituency. 

You should liaise with the relevant EROs and with election staff the other local council(s) at the earliest opportunity to decide how you will achieve this and to identify any issues. You will need to consider how you will obtain the data as well as considering the proportion of the constituency that is contained in the other local council area(s). 

You should decide on the arrangements for transferring and receiving data and consider how you are going to deal with the data relating to electors who are added to the register on one of the election notices of alteration.

You should establish how you will manage the data you receive in practice, including whether your software system can process data received from the other council(s) particularly where they use different software systems. You should also agree dates for the transfer of data and carry out tests ahead of the first scheduled transfer. 

One important consideration will be how the checking of personal identifiers on returned postal voting statements received on polling day across the constituency can be managed to limit any delay to the verification and count. 

Diweddarwyd ddiwethaf: 18 Tachwedd 2025