UK expats misled about right to vote

[OnGoldenPond]

I'm here visiting my Mum who has lived in Spain for the past 12 years. We got onto the topic of Brexit (obviously a big concern for her) and she complained about how unfair it was that she wasn't allowed to vote in the referendum as she is a Spanish resident and how all her local friends feel the same and would have voted Remain if had been given the chance. They also don't have the right to vote in Spanish national elections as they are not Spanish citizens.

This set me thinking as something didn't sit right to me. So I looked up voting rights of UK expats living in a n EU country on you.gov. And guess what? They can register as a British overseas voter for 15 years after leaving the UK which gives the right to vote in all UK general elections, referenda and EU parliament elections! So she and all her friends could have voted in the referendum. In her community alone that would probably about 200 voters who would have been overwhelmingly Remain voters.

DM was shocked. Apparently everyone in her community had been told by some "bloke who knows everything" that as soon as they became Spanish residents they lost all UK voting rights. So no one voted.

As I see it the implications are potentially enormous. Was this "bloke" a deliberate plant by the Leave campaign to prevent the predominantly Remain expat community voting? Were a series of "blokes" planted in UK expat communities throughout the EU?

TBH I don't know the number of UK citizens living in the EU, but I have a feeling that it may be a number which could have had a significant effect on the result. Has this issue ever been looked into?

If anyone knows any UK expats in the EU, please ask them to spread the word on this and encourage their fellow expats to register to vote before the 7th so they can have their say in the European elections and in a second referendum if it happens. It's easy to do online at you. Gov.uk/registertovote. All you need is the date you permanently left the UK, the address at which you were last registered to vote in the UK, your passport details and your UK NI number.

sorry that's really long, but difficult to summarise.

While I do agree with you to some extent, my DMs experience is that she has to work that little bit harder to fact find and check than she would do in UK. But I'm sure that's the same experience immigrants to UK face.
All part and parcel of the adventure of living in another countryear, comes with the territory!
My DM finds her Ayuntamiento a great help for info, not withstanding the language challenges!
I'm always in awe of DM who decided to permanently settle in Spain solo following my Dads death. She hasn't chosen the easiest life living very rurally as she does, but I'm sure the additional challenges and difficulties have only added to the richness of her life

www.thelocal.es/20160512/brexit-last-chance-expat-brits-urged-to-register-for-eu-vote There was a huge campaign across the EU to tell expats how to register to vote. The British ambassador in Spain was on multiple media channels, in English, - see just one example on the link. I don’t know what you think would have reached your Mum better, but it was certainly a very active campaign, not just passively hoping people would remember or realise they had the right.

Pretty much every election I have someone with the wrong end of the stick who thinks I can vote purely based on either being a resident or being a resident for a particular length of time so I don't think random guy who knows everything was likely a plant, plenty of people are confident of things that aren't true.

It's is very frustrating and maybe the efforts that were made to ensure people of their rights were not enough, but generally immigrants are left on their own to keep up with those sorts of things and it's considered our responsibility just as people within their own country are responsible to learn about the law and the changes that effect them. I regularly feel like I'm on a treadmill trying to keep up with both, but I'm honestly not sure how to do otherwise unless we think countries should keep a record of all people who leave to send us information on such things.

I'm getting the general message that it is generally thought that if you can't research your voting rights online you deserve to lose them and any kind of awareness campaign for less tech savvy or generally aware citizens is an unjustified waste of money.

People without access to the Internet could contact the British consulate/embassy by phone or letter to confirm rights. I was an expat pre-Internet and contacted the embassy with a question myself.

How was she denied the right to vote ? She's had 12 years in Spain, 9 years of which were pre-Brexit to find out her rights. She didn't. There were 2 general elections before Brexit where she could have found out if she was eligible to vote. She didn't. She would have had time before she went to Spain to find out her rights - I presume she knows her pension and health care rights ?
Did you have no contact with her before the referendum, knowing the possible repercussions to discuss it ?

I received an email, like I do every year, from my old council with the overseas voter registration form attached.

What happened to the mysterious male infiltrator? Is he still there? Did he mysteriously disappear after the vote?

We registered as overseas voters when we moved to France fourteen years ago. We have to renew that registration every year and we have ours set up for our DD to do a proxy vote, as there can be problems with delays in the post; we have voted in every GE and the referendum. We vote in French local elections and the EU elections in France. We will lose our votes next year under the fifteen year rule.
I think voting rights were something we researched before we moved, but it is hard to miss as a topic on expat forums.

I'm not sure what you expect to have happened? Was the UK government supposed to track down and write to every British national living abroad?
And how would an advertising campaign work?
I live in another European country but sorted out my voting rights before I left, along with healthcare, tax etc. It's part and parcel of moving abroad surely?

I didn't know (didn't bother to find out) that I could vote in UK general elections after I moved to France. I don't go on expat forums.
But as I had no intention of returning to the UK, owned no property in the UK, I didn't really feel that I should be having a say in a UK GE. I was more cross that I couldn't vote in France general and presidential elections. (French DH had been entitled to vote in UK GE whilst UK resident).

When the referendum was announced, I did want to vote and without actively looking up the information, I became aware that I had the right to do so I was still within the 15 years. I don't remember how I learnt this. Probably BBC Radio or an online newspaper.

Sorry, op, but (almost) everybody knows this. She wasn’t kept in the dark, the info is fairly common knowledge.

{What happened to the mysterious male infiltrator?}
Why should being male be classed as an 'infiltrator' on a parenting website?

I think the 'infiltrator' is referring to the local know it all who op thought could be a Leave plant, not a pp.

So, let's just get this right, you have a DM who lives in Spain and has done for 12 years. Were you never concerned about how Brexit could affect her and never discussed it with her until now!!
And this never came up in conversation until 3 years post Brexit!

Why a 15 year rule in the first place? This rule makes some U.K. citizens without any vote whatsoever. So we have taxation without representation, didn't that cause problems before?

If you live abroad do you nominate which constituency your vote is counted in? I assume 1m expats couldn't decide to register in Uxbridge for example?

Or is it based on your last UK address or something else completely?

Answered my own question:

researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/SN05923

British citizens living overseas are entitled to be registered to vote in UK Parliamentary elections for up to 15 years in the constituency they were registered in before leaving the UK. They are not entitled to vote in UK local elections or elections to the devolved assemblies.

Until 2015 the number of overseas voters registered to vote had never risen above 35,000. In the annual ONS electoral register figures of December 2016 this had risen to 264,000. This was largely because of an overseas voter registration campaign in the run up to the 2015 General Election and interest in the 2016 referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU.

At the UK General Election of 2017 there were a record 285,000 registered overseas voters. The Government have estimated that this is about 20% of eligible expats under the current 15-year limit. Since that peak the number has dropped back to around 125,000 (as of December 2018). As overseas voters must re-register annually, and there are no scheduled elections in which they can participate in 2018 or 2019 many are likely to have not bothered to re-register.

This rule makes some U.K. citizens without any vote whatsoever

Yup, I don't have the right to vote anywhere now. I have fewer voting rights than a property owning single woman in 1900. So much for universal adult suffrage.

But in my experience Britons in Europe do know they have a right to vote. It's just extremely difficult: I know very few people who managed to vote successfully in the referendum or in the 2017 GE or the Euros, due to postal voting ballots being received too late. Only those with a proxy can be sure of effectively casting a vote.

Did you not discuss it at the time? Did YOU not google it to set her straight?

So many questions.

Plus “Leave Plant”?

Why a 15 year rule in the first place?

It might have been only 10 years if Jeremy Corbyn's amendment had been more successful in 1989.

Hansard: Extension of Permitted Period of Overseas Residence
House of Commons Debate 1989;

Mr.Jeremy Corbyn (Islington, North);

"In a spirit of generosity, I tabled an amendment specifying 10 years. On reflection, I was probably a little too generous.I am sure that the Minister will be grateful for that and will accept my amendment."

"Twenty-five years is excessive in the extreme.People who have been resident abroad, working abroad, earning money abroad and probably not paying taxes abroad are not likely to be interested in politics in this country."

"The Government's motive is to find a pool of voting fodder for the Tory party in the tax havens around the world."

"They are not interested in democratic movements in this country, because they have set themselves up in some other country and earn their money there. My 10-year rule would allow those people who have working contracts abroad—for example, those in the diplomatic service—to maintain a link with this country I believe that a period of 25 years is quite ridiculous and, therefore, I commend my amendment to the House."

1. David Cameron promised to abolish the 15 year rule before the referendum but then didn't

1. About one million overseas votes went AWOL for various reasons: fullfact.org/europe/missing-eu-referendum-votes/ Anecdotally, I know a shedload of people whose postal votes arrived too late

1. The 15-year rule only applies to elections, not referendums. There is no set electorate for referendums, so they could have included expats if they wanted to. For instance members of the House of Lords can't vote in general elections but were allowed to vote in the referendum.

1. So our mass disenfranchisement was the result of deliberate Tory manipulation

oh and 5. most of Europe (Ireland being an exception because of the size of the diaspora) lets expats vote for life. Some places like France even have a special MP to represent overseas voters.

If you add together all the lost / rejected / late votes from overseas, the total is nigh on 17.3 million, very nearly enough to swing it...

I don't believe that anyone living in another EU state for 12 years has never had any paperwork to indicate that they still have some voting rights in the UK

I've been living in France for 22 years, never had the slightest sniff of paperwork about voting in the UK.

Zombie