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German Post Office refuses thousands of British expat referendum postal votes
| Published: | 8 Jun at 6 PM |
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Prepaid envelopes provided for expat Brexit referendum postal votes are being refused by German post office workers as they are the wrong size!
Around 100,000 British expats are believed to be living in Germany, with a good number registering for postal votes in the Brexit referendum. Although the prepaid envelopes provided with the voting forms comply with the Internal Business Reply Service scheme, they’re the wrong size as regards standard German envelopes.
As a result, numerous expat voters are being told that they must either pay for the service or dump the envelope into a post office box, with no guarantee of delivery. Expats attempting to make their voices heard might be forgiven for a lack of amazement at the fact that German standard letters must measure just 90x144mms and weigh no more than 50 grams – totally different from the UK’s standard A5 envelopes.
The news was the second glitch announced today, with the Electoral Commission’s online registration site crash hitting the headlines early this morning. The outage happened just an hour before the online registration deadline expired, and is said to have been due to an overload of prospective voters leaving registration to the last minute. However, followers of other disasters caused by failed government websites might believe otherwise.
British voters, whether expats or residents, might be interested to know that a new study has revealed a huge majority of citizens in other EU member states are against Britain’s leaving the European Union. The reason for this surprising result isn’t that millions believe the EU is the place to be, as the survey noted a high percentage of participants in major EU countries were more disenchanted with the state of the Union than are the Brits.
The survey, initiated by respected USA think tank Pew Research, noted that almost half of the electorate in the Netherlands, Germany and Spain are now eurosceptics, with the French scoring even higher at 61 per cent. Unsurprisingly, Greece came in at 71 per cent, whilst Britain’s opposition to the EU ranked at just 48 per cent.
Around 100,000 British expats are believed to be living in Germany, with a good number registering for postal votes in the Brexit referendum. Although the prepaid envelopes provided with the voting forms comply with the Internal Business Reply Service scheme, they’re the wrong size as regards standard German envelopes.
As a result, numerous expat voters are being told that they must either pay for the service or dump the envelope into a post office box, with no guarantee of delivery. Expats attempting to make their voices heard might be forgiven for a lack of amazement at the fact that German standard letters must measure just 90x144mms and weigh no more than 50 grams – totally different from the UK’s standard A5 envelopes.
The news was the second glitch announced today, with the Electoral Commission’s online registration site crash hitting the headlines early this morning. The outage happened just an hour before the online registration deadline expired, and is said to have been due to an overload of prospective voters leaving registration to the last minute. However, followers of other disasters caused by failed government websites might believe otherwise.
British voters, whether expats or residents, might be interested to know that a new study has revealed a huge majority of citizens in other EU member states are against Britain’s leaving the European Union. The reason for this surprising result isn’t that millions believe the EU is the place to be, as the survey noted a high percentage of participants in major EU countries were more disenchanted with the state of the Union than are the Brits.
The survey, initiated by respected USA think tank Pew Research, noted that almost half of the electorate in the Netherlands, Germany and Spain are now eurosceptics, with the French scoring even higher at 61 per cent. Unsurprisingly, Greece came in at 71 per cent, whilst Britain’s opposition to the EU ranked at just 48 per cent.
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