How to register to vote, and the voter ID rules

Registration and entitlement to vote are separate questions. You register once, and which elections you can vote in depends on your nationality and where you live.

British citizens, Irish citizens and qualifying Commonwealth citizens with leave to enter or remain — or who do not require it — can vote in all elections, including UK parliamentary general elections. The Commonwealth entitlement is broad and surprises people: citizens of countries including India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Australia, Canada, Jamaica, Kenya, Bangladesh and many others can vote in UK general elections if they are lawfully resident.

EU citizens' entitlement changed after the Elections Act 2022. Citizens of the Republic of Ireland, Cyprus and Malta retain full rights as Commonwealth or Irish citizens. Other EU citizens' rights to vote in English and Northern Irish local elections now depend on when they acquired their residence status or on whether their country has a bilateral agreement with the UK. Scotland and Wales took a different route entirely: both extended the local and devolved franchise to all legally resident foreign nationals, so an EU or non-EU citizen lawfully living in Scotland or Wales can vote in Scottish Parliament, Senedd and local elections there.

The voting age is 18 for UK parliamentary elections. Scotland and Wales have lowered it to 16 for their devolved and local elections, so a 16 year old in Glasgow or Cardiff can vote for their parliament but not for their MP.

You can register from 16 in England and Northern Ireland, and from 14 in Scotland and Wales, and you go onto the register as an attainer — recorded but not able to vote until you reach the qualifying age.

Some people cannot vote: members of the House of Lords cannot vote in UK general elections though they can in others, convicted prisoners serving a sentence cannot vote in UK parliamentary elections, and anyone convicted of certain electoral offences is barred for a period. Being homeless does not prevent registration — a declaration of local connection can be used where you have no fixed address, and the same route covers people in hostels, on boats and in refuges.

Register online at GOV.UK. It takes about five minutes. You need your name, address, date of birth, nationality and National Insurance number. If you do not have a National Insurance number you can still register — you will be asked to provide other evidence of identity instead.

Registration is individual. Since individual electoral registration replaced the household system, one person cannot register everyone at an address. The annual canvass form that arrives from the council asks the household to confirm who lives there, but each person still has to register in their own right.

Watch for the open register question. During the process you are asked whether you want your name and address included in the open register. The default is inclusion. The open register can be bought by anyone — marketing firms, data brokers, credit reference agencies for non-credit purposes — and being in it has nothing to do with voting. Ticking the opt-out removes you from the version that is sold while keeping you on the full register used for elections and for credit referencing. If you registered years ago and cannot remember what you chose, you can change it at any time by contacting your local electoral registration office.

You will get a confirmation, usually by email, and the council may write to confirm. If you do not hear anything within a couple of weeks, contact the electoral registration office — applications do fail, most often on a mismatch between the name or address you gave and the DWP records used to verify you.

Re-register when you move. Registration is tied to an address, and moving house does not carry it over. This is the single commonest reason people find themselves unregistered at an election, and it is also the reason the credit-file effect bites hardest for people who move often — private renters, in other words.

Register even if you do not intend to vote. The credit referencing and identity verification effects apply regardless of whether you ever go to a polling station, and there is no obligation to vote once registered. In Great Britain you can be fined for failing to respond to a canvass communication from your council, which is a separate matter from voting itself.

The Elections Act 2022 introduced a photo ID requirement for voting in person in Great Britain. What it applies to depends on where you are, and this is where most confusion arises.

For a UK parliamentary general election or by-election, photo ID is required across the whole United Kingdom.

In England, photo ID is also required for local council elections, mayoral elections and police and crime commissioner elections.

In Scotland and Wales, photo ID is not required for Scottish Parliament, Senedd or local council elections. Those are devolved franchises, run under devolved rules, and the ID requirement was not adopted. A voter in Scotland may therefore need ID at a general election and not at a council election held on a different day.

Northern Ireland has required photo ID since 2003 and its rules are separate again, with its own free Electoral Identity Card issued by the Electoral Office for Northern Ireland.

Accepted ID in Great Britain includes a UK, Irish, EEA or Commonwealth passport, a UK or EEA driving licence, certain concessionary travel passes such as an older person's bus pass or Oyster 60+ card, a Blue Badge, a biometric immigration document, a defence identity card, and the national identity card of an EEA state. Expired documents are accepted provided the photograph is still a good likeness — which is a genuinely important concession that a lot of people do not know about.

Some accepted documents are age-restricted in effect: older person's travel passes count while young person's travel cards generally do not, an asymmetry that attracted criticism when the rules were introduced.

If you have none of the accepted documents, apply for a Voter Authority Certificate. It is free, it is applied for online or on paper through your council, and it exists solely to satisfy the ID requirement. Apply well ahead of an election — the deadline is a matter of days before the poll and there is no discretion once it passes.

If you are turned away for lack of ID you can return to the same polling station with acceptable ID before it closes. You cannot vote without it and there is no provisional or challenged ballot procedure in Great Britain.

A postal vote is available to anyone in Great Britain without needing a reason. You apply online or on paper, and you now need to provide your National Insurance number and signature so your identity can be verified — an application that was straightforward before is slightly more involved than it used to be.

Postal vote arrangements are no longer open-ended. Applications must be renewed periodically rather than lasting indefinitely, so a postal vote set up years ago may have lapsed without your noticing. Check with your electoral registration office rather than assuming it is still in place.

Photo ID is not needed to vote by post, because identity is verified through the signature and date of birth on the postal voting statement. Get those right — a mismatch is the commonest reason a postal vote is rejected and counted as a spoilt ballot, and nobody tells you it happened.

Post it early. A postal vote must arrive by close of poll, not be posted by then. If it is too late to post, you can hand it in at your polling station or the council office, but there are now limits on how many postal votes one person may hand in on behalf of others, and a form must be completed when doing so.

A proxy vote lets someone you trust vote on your behalf. In Great Britain you now generally need a reason — being away, a medical condition, work commitments, being overseas, or being a service voter. The person acting as your proxy must be eligible to vote in that election and must bring their own photo ID to the polling station, not yours. There are limits on how many people one person can act as proxy for.

The deadlines are staggered and strict: registration closes roughly 12 working days before the poll, postal vote applications around 11 working days before, Voter Authority Certificate applications around six working days before, and proxy applications around six working days before, with a later emergency proxy route for a medical emergency or a work reason arising after the deadline. None of these can be extended. Diarise them the moment an election is called.

Students can register at both their home address and their term-time address, because both are genuine residences. You may vote in local elections at both if they are held by different councils, but you may only vote once in a UK parliamentary general election — voting twice is a criminal offence. In practice this means choosing which constituency to use, and the sensible choice is the one where your vote is likely to matter more.

British citizens living abroad can register as overseas voters, and the previous 15-year limit on that entitlement was removed by the Elections Act 2022, so long-term expatriates who were disenfranchised are now eligible again. Overseas electors vote in the constituency they were last registered in, or last resident in, and registration must be renewed periodically.

People with no fixed address can register using a declaration of local connection, giving a place where they spend a substantial part of their time rather than a residential address. The same mechanism serves people in hostels, refuges, patients in mental health hospitals and people living on boats.

Anyone whose safety would be at risk if their name and address appeared on the register can apply for anonymous registration. It requires supporting evidence — a court order, an injunction, or an attestation from a police officer of a specified rank, a director of adult or children's services or a refuge manager. The elector appears on the register only as an electoral number, and it is a genuine protection for people who have left an abusive relationship.

Service voters — members of the armed forces and their spouses or civil partners — can register with a service declaration that keeps their registration in place through postings rather than requiring re-registration each move.

If your application is rejected or you believe you have been wrongly removed from the register, contact your local electoral registration office first. There is a formal review and appeal process, and the register is corrected up to a deadline shortly before each poll.