Home > 1.3 Free suffrage > UNITED KINGDOM - Opinion on the Electoral Law
 
 
 
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Paragraph 90
 
90.  On the other hand, the system of postal voting in force in Great Britain is somewhat similar to the one of Northern Ireland, since the amendments introduced in 2006. One difference is that the individual application in Northern Ireland also requires the national insurance number or the statement that the elector does not have one, and the fact that for Northern Ireland, for the postal ballot to be valid the registration officer must, and not just can, check the data and the signature against the information available in the electoral office. In Great Britain, only 20% of returned postal votes are checked for correct personal identifiers. Therefore, these minor differences in the rules of postal voting in Northern Ireland can not be considered to affect the equal treatment of their citizens with respect to the rest of the citizens of the United Kingdom; on the contrary, these rules of postal voting guarantee in a better way the principle of free elections, and allow the citizens exercising their right to vote by post in a more secure and confident way.