The Elections Act 2022
The Elections Act 2022 received Royal Assent on 28 April 2022, and sets out some of the future changes to the electoral system which will be bought in over the next few years.
The Elections Act 2022 updates existing electoral law. Regulations under this new act are currently in the process of being made by Parliament so the following information is in draft format and subject to change when the final Regulations are made.
In summary, the major changes brought in by the Act over the next few years will include the following:
- Voters will be required to show photographic ID at polling stations before a ballot paper can be issued. Voter ID information can be found on our Voter ID page.
- The voting and candidacy rights for EU citizens will be altered.
- The voting rights for British Citizens living overseas will be extended to include those who left the UK more than 15 years ago.
- It will also bring in restrictions on how many postal votes can be handed in by an individual and how many people you can be proxy for.
- Changes will be made to how you can apply for postal / proxy voting and how often you have to update the information.
- It will improve accessibility of elections
- Mayoral and Police and Crime Commissioner elections will change from supplementary vote systems to first past the post systems.
The relevant legislation can be found at https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2022/37/contents/enacted.
A Summary from the Government can be found at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/elections-bill-2021-summary-factsheet/elections-bill-2021-summary-factsheet
information from the Electoral Commission can be found at https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/who-we-are-and-what-we-do/our-views-and-research/elections-act