Guidance for (Acting) Returning Officers administering a UK Parliamentary election in Great Britain
Checking the personal identifiers
You must check the identifiers on all returned postal voting statements.1
Cross-boundary constituencies
If you are the (A)RO for a constituency that crosses local authority boundaries you will need to consider what impact this will have on your processes for checking personal identifiers on returned postal voting statements, and whether you need to delegate some of your functions to a senior officer at the other local authority/authorities. You will need to consider how you will obtain the data from the other local authority/authorities as well as considering the proportion of the constituency that is contained in the other local authority area(s). You should liaise closely at an early stage in the election planning process with the ERO(s) and electoral services staff at the relevant local authority/authorities in order to identify any possible issues and how these will be addressed.
Checking the personal identifiers
If you have delegated authority to another person to make decisions on postal voting statements at the verification of postal vote identifiers, you should provide them with a copy of the following Commission and Forensic Science Service guidance on signature checking, and instruct them to follow it.
These tables are a guide to making decisions on whether to accept or reject a returned postal voting statement.
When to accept a returned postal vote statement:
Signature provided? | DoB provided? | Signature waiver granted? |
---|---|---|
Blank | Yes | Yes |
Yes | Provided but in a different format – e.g. day and month are transposed – and you are satisfied that the DoB given is the same as the one held on postal voters record | N/A |
When to reject a returned postal vote statement:
Signature provided? | DoB provided? | Signature waiver granted? |
---|---|---|
Blank | Yes | No |
Blank | Blank | Yes |
Yes | Blank | No |
Yes | Does not match postal voters record | No |
Does not match postal voters record | Yes | No |
Yes | Date postal vote completed provided in error | N/A |
Your decision on determining a postal voting statement does not have to be based only on the information on the postal voting statement and personal identifiers record.
When making your decision, you may refer to other sources, for example, the signature provided on a registration form, or consider any additional information you have. For example, an elector may contact you to say that they have broken their arm since supplying their identifiers to the ERO and are unable to replicate their normal signature.
You may decide to accept their postal voting statement as valid if you are satisfied that this is the case, even if it has a signature that looks different to the one on the personal identifiers record.
Every decision on a postal voting statement should be taken on an individual basis.
Complete absence of a signature (where the elector has not been granted a waiver) or a date of birth must always lead to a rejection.
In determining the validity of the postal voting statement, neither the signature nor the date of birth is more important than the other – both must be provided (unless the signature has not been provided and the elector has been granted a waiver), and both must match .
Candidates, election agents and postal voting agents may object to the rejection of a postal voting statement. If they object to a rejection, you must mark the postal voting statement ‘rejection objected to’2
before attaching it to the ballot paper envelope and placing it in the receptacle for rejected votes.
Accredited observers and representatives of the Commission have no right to object to the rejection of a postal voting statement.
- 1. Representation of the People (England and Wales) Regulations 2001 (RPR(E&W)) regulation 85A(2), Representation of the People (Scotland) Regulations 2001 (RPR(S)) reg 85A(2) ↩ Back to content at footnote 1
- 2. RPR(E&W) 2001, reg 85A(4), RPR(S) 2001, reg 85A(4) ↩ Back to content at footnote 2