Telford & Wrekin postal voters required to give new signatures
Postal voters across Telford and Wrekin are being contacted to provide the Electoral Registration Officer with a new specimen signature.
The law requires all postal voters to provide a new specimen signature every five years if they wish to keep their right to vote by post.
At elections, the specimen signature is compared with the signature the voter provides with their postal vote. All these measures are important checks to make sure that postal voting fraud cannot not take place.
There are just under 39,000 postal voters from the borough’s 124,000 electors, one of the highest ratios of postal voting in the country, and 21,000 are due to renew their signature this year.
Postal voters who are being contacted this year will have until 16 February to provide a new signature.
If someone fails to provide a new specimen signature by that date, they will be written to with an explanation that for future elections they will need to vote in person at a polling station or make a new application to vote by post.
Returning Officer, Jonathan Eatough, said: “We urge everyone who is due to provide us with a new signature to respond quickly. By law we are required to issue up to two further reminders in this exercise, but this is expensive and time consuming for us. Keep your vote safe and convenient for when the next elections come along.”
