Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the requirement in the Voter Identification Regulations 2022 for electors to possess photo identification in order to vote, how electors participating using a postal vote will be required to prove their identity when completing their ballot paper.

There are longstanding security measures focused on the security of the postal voting process, including requiring postal voters to provide personal identifiers at the time of applying for a postal vote and which are checked at the time of a poll. In addition, other measures are available to electoral administrators can apply around the process to ensure security, such as monitoring numbers of postal voters and locations for unusual activity.

The Elections Act 2022 introduces additional safeguards against the potential abuse of postal voting including extending the secrecy provisions, which had previously only applied in polling stations, to postal votes and therefore making anyone coercing someone completing a postal vote liable to further criminal sanctions. The Act also requires those registered for a postal vote to re-apply for a postal vote every three years; imposes a ban on political campaigners handling postal votes (with some limited exceptions), supported by the creation of a new offence; and provides a power to limit the number of postal votes that a person may hand-in to a polling station or to the Returning Officer on behalf of others.

The Elections Act 2022 introduces an identity check at the point of application for a postal vote, whereby an applicant will need to provide their National Insurance number (or other documents or attestations where the applicant cannot provide a national insurance number) to be checked against HMG records. This process mirrors the current practice for Register to Vote.