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Electoral Office Helpline: 0800 4320 712 (Freephone)

1 July 2009

JULY HOLIDAY CLOSING

All Electoral Offices will close for public business at 3.00pm on Friday 10 July and re-open at 9.00am on Wednesday 15 July.

24 June 2009

NEW RULES ON LATE REGISTRATION AND ABSENT VOTING HELPED EURO VOTERS

New provisions governing late registration allowed almost 12,000 changes to the electoral register prior to the 2009 European Parliamentary Election. The changes contributed to an increase of over 69,000 in the electorate compared to the 2004 election.

Douglas Bain, Chief Electoral Officer announced the figures during a post-election seminar hosted by the Electoral Commission where delegates also heard that the number of permanent absent voters increased by over 7% while there was a reduction of 76% in one-off absent votes.

During the scrutiny of absent vote applications 15 cases of suspected forgery were identified including three cases where doctors’ signatures appear to have been forged. All these cases are being passed to the PSNI and a number of other cases are still being considered.

Douglas Bain said: ‘The new rules resulted in a significant increase in the number of people entitled to vote and I will continue to look at ways to build on this success.

‘My office is committed to ensuring that everyone legally entitled to be included on the electoral register and to vote is given every opportunity to do so but I will not hesitate to take appropriate action where any attempts are made to cheat the system.’

Anyone who needs any information about Electoral Registration should contact us.