Let us know if you’ve had difficulties similar to British expatriate Dan Almond (who comments below) in trying to vote as an overseas elector in the recent 2017 General Election:
“My wife and I live in Italy and have done since Sept 2015. We are residents.”
“We decided to register to vote in the 2017 General Election with Wandsworth Borough Council (Tooting constituency was our last UK address).”
“We received confirmation by email from WBC on 8 May that our registration had been successful.”
“We chose to vote by post rather proxy and informed WBC by email on 11 May.”
“Having received nothing by 30 May I rang WBC and was told that our postal votes would go out in the next few days. I responded by saying hadn’t they left it rather late to do this. They didn’t think so saying it was being delivered first class.”
“We received our postal votes at lunchtime of June 8 leaving us no time at all to return it.”
“I feel (and have told them so) that Wandsworth Electoral Services left this far too late (as proven by the date we received them) and effectively denied us the right to vote in the election. I have contacted the returning officer, the head of Electoral Services at WBC, and both the Labour and Conservative candidates (both of whom thought it was appalling).”
“I am left wondering how many other overseas voters lost out in the same way and where we stand? “
Votes for Expat Brits blog 
My daughter had the same problem and didn’t manage to vote. She’s studying on an Erasmus exchange in Holland.
We, by the way, have lived in France for 26 years and can’t vote anywhere!
I could imagine that earlier there may have been an argument that those leaving the UK were doing so to distance themselves from life in the old country. This may well have been the case for those seeking a new start in the far corners of the British Empire or laterly the Old Commonwealth but the EU is quite different. The right to move freely within the EU is based on one’s nationality and right to reside in the UK. There is no formal emigration from the UK nor formal immigration to another member state so that one does not really leave the UK in the 18th Century sense. Leaving London for Brussels or Budapest is thus no different from leaving Liverpool for Bradford. Add to this modern communications, and by this I do not mean archaic postal voting, and there is no excuse save dogma for denying UK EU citizens their rights.
I was not all surprised to read Dan Almond’s note of June 12, particularly in the light of the shameful conduct of the UK government in continuing to deny of any form of vote to those UK expatriates who, like myself, have resided outside the UK (in my case in Italy) for more than 15 years, thus excluding us from any form of democratic process, including that which regarded last year’s referendum vote, the results of which are affecting all of us but in which we had no say whatsoever, notwithstanding Mr Cameron’s undertaking, in his party’s 2015 election manifesto, to abolish the 15 year time limit on overseas voting rights.
Best regards
Andrew Dawson
Similarly so, my wife and I are postal voters. The problem is definitely in the system in that the Electoral offices of the area to which you are associated, do NOT send the voting forms out in sufficient time to allow overseas postal votes to complete and return. There is no excuse for this since, they, the offices, have more than ample notice of an intended election. The forms going out early have absolutely no significance whatsoever other than to stop the registered overseas voter fulfilling his democratic right – submitting his/her vote – if it is not received in good time. This is appalling, we had the same situation in the previous election.