Electoral Commission says ‘systems issue’ led to postal vote and polling cards being sent to people not eligible to vote

Some EU nationals have been wrongly sent postal votes and polling cards for the UK’s referendum because of a “systems issue”, the Electoral Commission has said.

The mistake means a number of EU nationals will have their votes cancelled and receive letters explaining they are not eligible to take part in the 23 June poll on British membership of the EU after all. The Electoral Commission said a “small number” of people were affected but it could not yet confirm exactly how many.

The problem emerged when Iain Duncan Smith, a leading Brexit campaigner and former work and pensions secretary, complained to the Electoral Commission and David Cameron that he was hearing worrying reports from a number of sources about EU nationals receiving polling cards.

People are only eligible to vote in the EU referendum if they are citizens of the UK, another Commonwealth country, or Ireland.

In a reply to Duncan Smith, the commission said one report of a Polish voter in Kingston getting a polling card was due to him declaring himself British on his registration form and the matter had been referred to the police.

But it also acknowledged that there had been a problem with classification of voter nationality that meant some ineligible EU nationals had been sent postal votes and polling cards.

It said Xpress, an electoral software supplier to a number of councils, had confirmed that nationality may not have been set correctly for some voters.

“Xpress have confirmed that they are in the process of issuing a patch for their system that will fix the issue,” it said. “They have now written to all their customers and will issue the patch later this evening (1 June 2016). The patch will cancel any postal votes that have been wrongly issued to electors.

Xpress had been unable to confirm the exact numbers of those affected. “Obviously, this will vary by local authority,” the commission said. “Of the two areas they had looked at, one had one elector who was affected, the other had six.”

The commission initially said the issue only affected a “handful” of EU nationals but a statement later changed this to a “small number” and revealed it was still working out the scale of the problem.

“We are aware that a small number of non-eligible EU citizens had mistakenly received poll cards and, in some instances, postal votes for the EU referendum,” a spokesman said.

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“The software provider has resolved the issue which means that, if any postal votes have been issued to these electors, they will be cancelled and none of these electors will be shown as eligible on the electoral registers to be used at polling stations on 23 June.

“All of the affected electors will also be written to by their local electoral registration officer with an explanation of what happened and will be told that they will not be able to vote at the referendum.”

Duncan Smith said the commission needed to provide more urgent reassurance that the affected EU nationals would not be able to vote. “It is absolutely vital that the public can trust the electoral process, so there are urgent questions for the commission here,” he said. “We need to know how many people were affected, how long have they known for, and what assurances can they give us that they will sort this out?”

“Of particular concern is the issue of postal votes, many of which which will already have been returned. What measures do they intend to take to ensure than any ballots cast by ineligible voters are not counted?”