British citizens can still register for UK elections

| 13/06/2024 | 25 Comments
Labour Leader Kier Starmer (left) and Tory Leader Rishi Sunak, the current prime minister

(CNS): British citizens living abroad who are eligible to vote in the UK general election on 4 July can still register to vote provided they register before midnight on Tuesday, 18 June. The UK Electoral Commission is calling on voters to register now and apply for an absent vote if they will not be in the UK on polling day. For the first time, British citizens living abroad may be eligible to vote regardless of how long they have been living outside the UK.

Until the law was changed, British nationals who had lived abroad for more than 15 years lost their right to vote. Now, they may be eligible to regain that right. Since 16 January 2024, when the 15-year rule was abolished, over 100,000 applications to register to vote have been made by UK citizens living overseas.

Applicants will need to provide details of the address and time they were last registered or resident in the UK. Electoral Registration Officers, who are responsible for the electoral roll in their area, must be able to verify an applicant’s identity and past connection to the area. 

Craig Westwood, Director of Communications at the UK Electoral Commission, urged people living abroad who want their say to register now. “It no longer matters how long you have been living outside the UK. If you are eligible, you can register and have your say at the ballot box,” he said.

“As an overseas voter you will have to prove your connection to the constituency you were last registered to vote, or where you lived if you have never been registered to vote before. We know that there are eligible voters all around the world, so we are calling on anyone with friends and family abroad to help spread the word and let them know to register before the deadline.”

Applications can be made online here.

Many overseas voters will also need to apply for an absent vote if they will not be in the country on 4 July. Applications to vote by post or proxy in Great Britain can now also be made online.

See: Apply for a postal vote and Apply for a proxy vote.

The deadline to apply for a postal vote is BST 5:00pm on 19 June, and to apply for a proxy vote is BST 5:00pm on 26 June. Proxy voting (when someone you trust votes on your behalf) may be a preferred option for anyone living further afield who is concerned about how long it might take to receive and return a postal vote.

To find out if they are eligible to vote, British citizens abroad can call the local authority where they were last registered to vote or where they last lived in the UK to check. Details of local authority can be found on the Electoral Commission website by entering the postcode of the last place they lived in the UK.


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Comments (25)

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  1. Anonymous says:

    What about registration for UK citizens with no address in UK? Most BOTC/UK dual citizens living in Cayman have never lived in the UK.

  2. Anonymous says:

    I can’t help but feel for UK citizens, their choices are as poor as ours.

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  3. Anonymous says:

    F**k the Tories.

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    • Jim Hacker says:

      11:33, Yes, they were the turkeys that decided 10 years ago that BREXIT would be so wonderful. Boris and his sycophants were such fools and we are no paying the price for their lies and distortions.

  4. Anonymous says:

    If voting made a difference they wouldn’t let us, do it.

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  5. Anonymous says:

    Anything in the small print that opens you up to being taxed on your Cayman income in the UK by registering to vote?

    Plus, they’re all lying cheating scumbags so what’s the point, none of them stick to any of their manifestos.

    And they all wonder why the voting turnout is so abysmal.

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  6. Anonymous says:

    Need to keep out Starmer – guaranteed Labour will attack Cayman’s financial services sector

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  7. Anonymous says:

    Vote for:-
    Puppet 1
    Puppet 2
    Puppet 3

    Very few people still believe that integrity, truth and honesty exists in politics…..or ever did exist.

    Just look at the morality and integrity of our bunch.
    The religious ones are the worst.

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  8. Angela says:

    Vote out the Tories!

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    • Anonymous says:

      and get Labour who will be as bad.. different cheeks of the same backside.

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      • Anonymous says:

        You have not paid much attention to the last 14 years if you truly believe this.

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        • Anonymous says:

          It’s also a myth that it’s “all the evil Tories”. As one FT commentator said last year:

          “Try looking over in Europe and you’ll find most countries haven’t performed any better in trade, investment, and productivity. And France (the only one I know well enough to comment on) has seen a noticeable decline in the quality of its public services:

          – Desertification of hospital coverage in some areas with people in parts of the countryside now living 40 miles from the closest A&E for example

          – Train lines have been cancelled (for example, before you had a direct train from Quimper in Southern Britanny to Chartres, provincial town 50 miles west from Paris; now you have to go to Paris and get another train for Chartres, which takes another 20-30 mins on the usual journey time.

          – There are many healthcare things that aren’t entirely covered by the state anymore, and there are more and more every single year.

          Sure, it’s still significantly better than in Britain, but then it always was. it’s following the exact same trajectory though, while its crime problem is MUCH, MUCH worse.

          For example:

          – There has been 1 gang murder a week in Marseille since the summer 2021

          – A man in Dijon was killed whilst watching TV in his living room when a lost Kalashnikov round fired by a gang shooting at another gang outside his flat found its way through his wall and into his chest…

          – The riots last summer: in the 1980s you had about 15-20 difficult neighbourhoods where it used to happen; in 2005 it happened in hundreds of neighbourhoods around all major cities in the country; and last summer, it was in thousands of neighbourhoods in almost every single city (say, more than 10,000 inhabitants). Where my cousins live (Angers) or uncle and aunt (Chartres), there had never been this kind of thing even in 2005… and this year it was mayhem.

          Brits tie all their misery to the Tory regime because there hasn’t been political change in so long over what has been a protracted period of decline. But in reality, elsewhere in Europe, there have been multiple political regimes from different sides of the isle, and the trajectory is pretty much identical. Labour won’t solve any of your problems.”

          https://www.ft.com/content/22ca5950-791e-4d8b-b531-0d733b4c4c78?commentID=6dc77d04-290b-4eb5-bb2c-d1ca41e18b11

          All of the post-WWII tax-and-redistribute welfare states are failing. For both the UK and France, Argentina-isation beckons…

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          • Jim Hacker says:

            6:19, There is one fact that The Economist recently pointed out —
            In the last five years every country in the EU has seen economic growth, however, the UK has seen negative economic growth in that time period. The Tory way is not the way forward and all of this economic decline began with the foolhardy Tory BREXIT decision. The dumbest self inflicted political and economic wound ever in the UK.

    • Greco says:

      Who do you think will be more supportive of Cayman and our interests?

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      • Anonymous says:

        Why would they? The torries are the ones who only care about the wealthy people.

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      • Anonymous says:

        Definitely not Labour. They despise offshore territories as they believe that the rich are moving their money here so as to avoid tax in the UK. Labour is no friend to Cayman

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        • Anonymous says:

          Correct.

        • Realist says:

          True, but Labour socialism arguably laid the foundations for Cayman. See:

          “Tax avoidance was becoming an important political issue in Britain in the 1950s, with the Labour Party’s Working Party on Tax Avoidance and Evasion’s 1959 report, Tax Dodging, stressing the need to focus taxation on “those who live by speculation or who already have wealth”.

          Serious discussions of the introduction of wealth taxes in Britain also created a growing demand for offshore products within the sterling area (as the exchange control area managed by the British and incorporating both colonies and some former colonies was known), as did the weakening of capital controls brought about by the British return to current account convertibility in 1959.”

          – Freyer, Tony, and Andrew P. Morriss. “Creating Cayman as an offshore financial center: Structure & strategy since 1960.” ArIz. st. lJ 45 (2013): 1297.
          https://scholarship.law.tamu.edu/facscholar/23, pp 1311-1312.

          I’m not taking a view as to their impact in the future, but certainly their greed in seeking to confiscate wealth from hard working citizens in the past actually worked in Cayman’s favour!

    • Anonymous says:

      Pathetic. Instead of what? More corrupt fools?
      Don’t you get it yet?
      The whole system was created to divide us.
      Come on good people, wake up!

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      • Sir Humphrey says:

        BREXIT certainly did a great job dividing us but also cutting us off from the rest of Europe, our # 1 trading partner.

        Friggin stupid Boris and his followers who still dominate the Tory party.

        A totally self inflicted economic wound.

      • Anonymous says:

        It’s true.

        It’s true in the UK.

        It’s true in the U.S.

        It’s true here.

        It’s true.

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