Take care over election postage

BRITONS in France intending to vote by post in the UK general election should take extra care after a reader told Connexion he received a pre-paid envelope for his ballot that would not work from France.

The reader, from the South West of France, emailed to say he received a postal ballot from Westminster council, well in time for his vote to count for the election on May 7; however it came with a pre-paid ‘Business Reply Plus’ stamp.

He then called a helpline number provided, to find out if this would work from France and he was told it would not – he should add his own stamp.

He said: “To my mind, this does raise a serious possibility that a large number of expats will fail to get their votes registered.”

An Electoral Commission spokeswoman said councils are obliged to provided postage-paid envelopes for postal voters in the UK but are not obliged to do so for people abroad.

“Different envelopes should be sent to overseas voters, so it could be that the reader was been sent the wrong envelope by mistake,” she said.

Connexion would therefore like to warn readers to take care should the same thing happen – if your envelope has pre-paid postage it will probably not be suited for sending from France and your ballot may not arrive. We would also be interested to hear from anyone else who received such envelopes, at news[at]connexionfrance.com