Guidance for Returning Officers administering a Senedd 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 the delivery of nomination papers, which is 4pm 19 working days before polling day for the Senedd elections.2

The Electoral Management Board (EMB) may make directions or recommendations for when the first issue of postal votes is dispatched to electors.

The early dispatch of postal votes will maximise the time available for electors – especially for those that need to be sent overseas and service voters – to receive, complete and return their postal votes. You can find more information in 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 Electoral Registration Officer (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.3 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. 

If you are not also the ERO, you should liaise with them to obtain the postal voters’ list and the proxy voters’ list 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.4 This notice must be published on the day of the deadline for nominations papers.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 Senedd elections also includes the relevant publication dates for these notices. 

You can find a Senedd election timetable in the absent voting section of our resources page.  

Deadline for absent vote applications and requests for changes to 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 the delivery address) to any existing absent vote (i.e. postal, proxy and postal proxy) arrangements

If, however, an elector is an existing postal voter and has already returned their postal ballot paper, 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.

This table summarises the deadlines for easy reference:

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.