Councils aren’t using postal ballots to suppress the youth vote

26 November 2019

We’ve seen a few posts going round social media today claiming that the date of birth section on postal ballots is being pre-filled with the year starting “19” like this.

191126_postal_ballots.png
There’s been concern raised that this could confuse and may even discourage voters born in 2000 and 2001 who are eligible to vote.

We don’t think there’s anything to be worried about here. We contacted Bromley council who said that they do pre-fill the date of birth on postal ballots, but that voters born in 2000 or 2001 would receive a ballot prefilled accordingly with “20..” 

That was also the response of Cheshire West and Chester Council, the source of another of the questioned ballots.

Postal ballots are pre-filled like this to discourage people writing in the current date, rather than their date of birth. 

Bromley Council told us that the chance of someone receiving an erroneously pre-filled ballot was very small, but that if anyone born in the 2000s does, they should just cross the “19” out and write their actual year of birth above. 

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