Guidance for Returning Officers administering a Scottish Parliament election

After an election, EROs are required to notify postal voters if their postal vote has been rejected as a result of their postal voting statement being rejected. You must keep a record of the categories under which you are rejecting individual postal voting statements to enable this.1  

Every rejected postal voting statement must be accounted for. 

This list must contain, for each such rejected postal vote:2

• the elector’s name and address (and the name and address of the proxy if the elector has a proxy)
• the elector’s number on the register of electors (and that of the proxy if the elector has a proxy)
• the specified reason(s) for the rejection of the postal voting statement
• any other information relating to the rejection that you consider appropriate, but not the ballot paper numbers

The specified reasons for rejection of a postal voting statement are: 

• the signature does not match the example held on the personal identifiers record
• the date of birth does not match the one held on the personal identifiers record
• the signature field is blank
• the date of birth field is blank

Where a postal voter appears on the list of postal votes because their statement has been rejected, the ERO is required to notify the postal voter of the rejection within three months of the date of poll.3

The ERO’s requirement to send notification is suspended if either:4

• the person is no longer shown as voting by post in the relevant list at the time the notification is sent
• you suspect that an offence may have been committed in relation to a particular postal vote

You should therefore keep a record of any instances where you suspect an offence may have been committed and forward it to the ERO, so that they know in which case they should not send out a postal vote identifier rejection notice. This should be done at the same time as you forward all other election documents to the ERO.

Where fraud is suspected, you should package the contents of the postal ballot pack separately and inform your local police SPOC. You should handle the postal ballot pack as little as possible and, where possible, make a note of each person who has handled the postal ballot pack.

For more information see our guidance for EROs on issuing postal vote identifier rejection notices.