EU citizens stopped from voting in UK after confusion over registration forms

This article is more than 5 years old
Complaints about 'complicated' declaration with 'no purpose' as foreign residents of UK are turned away from polling stations
A woman leaves a polling station in Wiltshire.
A woman at a polling station in Wiltshire. Some EU citizens were unable to vote in the European elections despite living here for years. Photo: John Lynch/Demotix/Corbis



Dozens of people have taken to social media to complain after being refused ballot papers by election officers. One Portuguese councillor said the system was "broken".

Writing on Twitter, @poleinbelfast wrote: "Me and friend have been told to vote in Poland in EU elections, even though I had votes in the last 3 elections in the UK."

Dominic Zapaman, tweeting under the handle @zapaman, said: "My wife is German was denied vote in EU election here in NW! Why? Has lived here 20yrs! Where is her vote?"

Susanne Kendler, head of the voter registration organisation LetmevoteUK, described the process as "confusing" as registering for EU elections required a second set of forms to complete the process.

Kendler said they had received numerous questions from people who could not find the forms they needed to register. "It may seem simple to some, but wasn't so for all. Many people will have just gone to register through their councils as they did before.

"Our understanding is that some confusion may have come from the fact that while people can register all members of a household on one form, the confirmation for EU citizens to vote in the EU elections here have to be individual. That may have caught people out, as they thought they already registered."

Guilherme Rosa, who was elected on Thursday as a Labour councillor in Lambeth, was astonished to find he was disenfranchised in EU elections. "Why do foreign European local residents have to deliberately opt in to vote here and send a form instead of the more logical choice of opting in to vote in their country of origin [if they wish]?" he asked. "The system is so complicated that even I struggled to understand."

He said that he returned various forms as requested but still was not allowed to vote and claimed it was a deliberate attempt to exclude voters. "When I turned up to vote, I was told I could vote in the local elections but not the European. This has to be a deliberate attempt to exclude people who would, mostly, have voted for parties which are not against immigrants. I know the same thing happened to many people. The system is broken. We should have the same rights as British nationals in these elections, but we don't."

Joanna Papageorgiou, from Bristol, told the Guardian that she was in a similar situation. "I registered to be on the electoral roll last year, as soon as I moved to my new flat. I received a letter two months ago asking me to declare that I was not going to vote in any other regional election and only in the UK one.

"There was no envelope and there wasn't even an easily accessible address on it to which I could send it. I filled out the form and signed it. I then sent it to the Electoral Commission address I found on a website. I received no polling card. I showed up at my polling station and my name and address were crossed out with a pencil. I was told I could not vote because I was registered to vote in a different country."

David Schoibl, chair of the Labour Movement for Europe, said there were about 800,000 to 900,000 non-British registered voters who would need to have filled out several forms before the 2014 elections. He said it had been much harder to register this time around and the second declaration form had "no purpose."

"It's just an additional hurdle for people to vote and I haven't heard that there was a big problem with people voting twice in the EU elections in their country of origin and their country of residence."

Petros Fassoulas, chair of European Movement UK, said: "It's definitely not good to see so many EU citizens feel disenfranchised because they could not vote. EU citizens' right to vote anywhere they live in the EU is a fundamental right and should not be compromised."

The Electoral Commission said that the law in this area had not changed. In a statement, it added: "It is clear that some EU citizens were unaware that they had to fill in the declaration form, and some have told us that they did not receive one from their electoral registration officer. We will be following this up in our post-election review and ensuring that electoral registration officers are aware that they must send this form."