BOVF has published "Recommendations for the United Kingdom to enable voters living overseas to fully and properly participate in national elections", a benchmarking study of how twenty countries handle voting by citizens abroad.
The report was prompted by a single figure. At the 2024 general election, the Electoral Commission found that only 52% of overseas postal ballots were returned in time to be counted. Nearly half of the overseas voters who registered, requested a ballot and returned it were not counted.
What the comparison shows
Across the twenty countries studied, the UK's arrangements sit at the less functional end. Several countries route completed ballots through their diplomatic missions. Several allow ballot papers to be downloaded, removing the outbound postal journey. Several maintain registration automatically through consular or passport processes rather than requiring a separate renewal every few years.
The registration figures track this. Around 68% of French citizens abroad are registered to vote. The UK figure at the 2024 general election was roughly 191,000 people out of 3.4 million eligible — about 5%.
The two central recommendations
- Ballot return via embassies and consulates, using the diplomatic bag. The infrastructure already exists and already moves sensitive material to a fixed timetable.
- Downloadable ballot papers, which eliminate the outbound leg entirely and leave only the return journey to be solved.
The report also recommends linking electoral registration to passport renewal, so that the three-year lapse in overseas registration is caught by a process citizens already go through.
What happens next
The recommendations are addressed to government and to members of all parties. BOVF is non-partisan, and the report was written to be implementable by whoever is in office — the proposals are administrative rather than constitutional, and none of them advantage a particular party.
We have shared the report with the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Citizens' Rights and with the MPs we have met over the past two years.
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