Postal vote addresses legally available to candidates
(CNS): Registered voters living overseas were surprised to get unsolicited campaign material in the post after applying for a postal ballot, but the Elections Office says their data has not been compromised. The candidates’ agents are allowed to observe the postal ballot process from start to finish as part of a free and fair election that enables those standing for election to verify for themselves that there are no duplications in ballots. This means the addresses where overseas ballots are sent are available under the law to candidates and agents.
There is an ongoing debate about whether the election legislation needs to be amended to align with the Data Protection Act and prevent local addresses from being publicly available and online on the register of electors, but voters who will be overseas on Election Day and requested a postal ballot assumed their foreign address would remain confidential.
However, some CNS readers who are working and studying overseas told CNS that they were concerned that the overseas postal addresses they had supplied to the Elections Office in order to get a postal ballot had been leaked. One such voter told us they were unaware that their overseas address is shared and used for campaigning.
But the office confirmed that agents and, by extension, candidates have legal access to the address where postal ballots go.
“Lists of voters to whom postal ballots have been issued, including their overseas mailing addresses, are shared with agents who were present at the time of the postal ballot issue,” Elections Supervisor Wesley Howell said.
“Lists of voters who vote by post or by mobile voting are always provided to agents and are a key part of the transparency aspect of the Election-Referendum, which helps to ensure that individuals are only permitted to vote once, either by postal, mobile or on Election Day.”
The office also publishes the names of voters who have been issued postal ballots on the Elections Office website, as required by law, but that list does not include mailing addresses. According to that list, as of 21 March, 225 postal votes have already been dispatched.
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Category: Election News
They may have access to that data, but the data protection law states that they can only use that data for the purpose for which it was provided.
This means that legally they should not be able to use that information to send campaign materials, since it was only provided in order to obtain postal ballots.
If there is a reason that the candidates should be allowed to send campaign materials using this information then this needs to be explicitly stated when people sign up for postal ballots, which clearly was not done since those people were unaware…
surely the fact that every registered voter’s physical home address is publicly available goes against the data protection law – no?