Postal Vote Signature Refresh

Absent Voters (i.e. those who vote by post or proxy) are required to provide a signature and date of birth when they first apply.

When you are sent your postal vote for an election you are required to provide your signature and date of birth on a postal voting statement. These 'personal identifiers' are checked against those you provided on your original postal vote application form, to ensure that they match. This is to prevent someone else from using your vote. If they do not match, your vote cannot be counted. Your personal identifiers are always kept separate from your ballot paper, so no-one knows how you have voted.

An important part of these security measures is providing a fresh specimen signature every 5 years, since people's signatures and circumstances can change over time. The legislation requires the Electoral Registration Officer to carry out the first annual refresh of signatures by 31 January 2012 in order to ensure that the signatures for as many absent voters as possible are refreshed, producing as accurate a record as possible and potentially limiting the number of postal votes that are rejected due to mismatched identifiers.

Therefore, anyone who has had a postal, proxy or postal proxy since January 2007 will be sent a signature refresh form for us to legally request your latest signature.

Please look out for the form being sent to your address in January 2012. Please make sure you sign and return it ASAP as we legally have to send a reminder 3 weeks later to everyone who does not respond and this costs us more money.

If you have a disability which means that you either cannot provide a signature or sign in a consistent and distinctive way, please contact us.

If you no longer want to vote by post you must respond by ticking the relevant box on the form and return it to us as soon as possible in order to avoid any unnecessary reminders.

If you do not return the signature refresh form by the deadline your existing absent vote facility will be cancelled and you will have to vote in person or make a new application.

This Absent Vote signature refresh exercise will be undertaken every January.