An estimated 3.5 million Britons living overseas will from Tuesday be eligible to vote in UK general elections, in one of the biggest increases in the country’s electoral franchise in a century.
The expansion in the electorate follows a change in the law, approved by parliament in 2022, scrapping a previous curb on UK citizens voting if they had lived overseas for over 15 years.
Implemented ahead of an election set for later this year, it is the most significant change to the voter rolls since a 1928 law granted women equal voting rights, and a 1969 move to lower the voting age to 18 from 21.
Britons worldwide will now be able to register to vote online, regardless of how long they have been overseas.
Under UK election law, once registered they will also be permitted to donate to political parties and campaigners.
Around 233,000 overseas voters were registered for the last election in December 2019, a significant Brexit-attributed bump on the numbers seen in previous contests.
The government estimates Tuesday’s change could enfranchise around 3.5 million people — nearly treble the 1.3 million votes that was the winning margin in the 2016 referendum on European Union membership.
It is also greater than the difference in the vote totals for Britain’s two main parties – the Conservatives and Labour – in five of the last six general elections.
But UK elections ignore the parties’ overall vote counts, instead electing lawmakers under the first-past-the-post system in 650 individual constituencies.
