Electoral rolls
Electoral rolls of voters’ rolls are lists of people eligible to vote in local, parliamentary or other elections. Not everyone could vote. Only a few men were able to vote before 1832 when the electoral system was reformed. Legislative changes during the 19th and early 20th centuries gradually increased the number of men who could vote. Women were first allowed to vote in local elections in 1882 and by 1930 all men and women aged 21 and over could vote, lowered to 18 in 1969 and in Scotland to 16 from 2014.
Electoral rolls usually include the first name and surname of each voter and their residence. Until 1918, as the right to vote was based property owned or rented, electoral rolls also include the voter’s occupation, their qualification to vote and the address of the qualifying property. They also showed the date on which individuals reached voting age during their first year on the electoral roll and show any restrictions on voting (such as European citizens who could only vote in certain elections).
Electoral rolls are arranged by electoral area and street address, so knowledge of the address will be necessary to search for a person, possibly gained from a contemporary printed post office directory. Electoral rolls can give information about a number of electors at an address, such as relatives or lodgers, or neighbours, or changes in areas of high turnover of occupants.
Since 2003, two versions of electoral rolls have been compiled – the open and the full rolls – and voters have had the right to have their name excluded from the open register. The open register can be purchased and used for marketing purposes while the full register can only be used for electoral purposes. Individuals have also the right to request anonymous registration for personal safety and the details of young people under 16 are not published.
The survival of electoral rolls is patchy. Some local authority archives services will still have papers about drawing up the electoral roll for 1832 and some will hold important rolls such as those for 1918 and 1945 compiled for returning members of the armed forces. The National Library of Scotland holds copies of almost all electoral registers from 1946 to the present for the whole of Scotland.
Current and recent full electoral rolls can only be accessed for lawful electoral purposes. In order to comply with this legal restriction, access to full electoral rolls is normally restricted for at least 10 years.