Lib Dem leadership ballot papers: key information for party members

Ballot papers have now gone out, giving all Liberal Democrat members the power to choose between Ed Davey and Layla Moran as the party’s next leader.

Here are a few pieces of key information to help members understand the process:

Online voting

Most members (over 95%) were sent a voting email, with details of how to vote via a secure website.

The emails were sent out in batches over Thursday 30th July and through to 9am Friday 31st July, spaced out to ensure that the online voting platform can cope with the volume of votes.

The email came from “Alan Masters – Liberal Democrats” and the email address was elections@libdems.org.uk. The subject line of the email was “Your ballot paper – Leader of the Liberal Democrats”.

If you didn’t get your vote by 10am on Friday 31st July – and don’t fall into any of the postal voting categories below – then you can get in touch with the elections team on elections@libdems.org.uk. The team aims to respond within three working days.

Postal votes (offline voting)

Over 95% of party members are receiving an online ballot via email. For other members – around 5,000 – their posted ballot papers went out in the post on Wednesday 29th July. They, therefore, should have hit doormats between Thursday 30th July and Sunday 2nd August for members in the UK, and by 14th August for members overseas.

Members expecting a posted ballot who haven’t received on those timescales can request a replacement by emailing elections@libdems.org.uk.

Postal votes went out to people where:

• There is no usable email address on file, or
• A postal vote has been requested by the member, or
• Their email address is not securely unique to one person (e.g. two members using the same email address, a role-based one or an @libdems.org.uk one)

In addition, any member whose email addresses could not be uploaded to the email platform, or that hard bounced, will be sent a postal vote in a second batch that will go to print on 3rd August and should arrive 6th-11th August.

As above, if a posted ballot does not arrive, the team can be contacted on elections@libdems.org.uk or, if the person making the query doesn’t have access to email, they can call 020 7022 0988 between 09:30 and 17:30, Monday to Friday.

Thank you to the team at Lib Dem HQ for the information this post is based on.

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