Register of electors

Registers of Electors [Reference.RE] start in 1832. There are occasional gaps. The registers are created by the local authority responsible for administering elections in their local area. The dates of the most recently received registers vary between areas.

No registers were made for the following years: 1916, 1917, 1940-1944.

Our references for registers are RE followed by the year. To check the catalogue we suggest you search for reference REYYYY e.g. RE1957

Our Registers of Electors for 1832-1986 have been licensed to and digitised by Ancestry UK, which is a paid subscription service.  You can have free access to these records at the Archives Service or possibly via your local library service if they have a corporate subscription.

Registers of Electors are arranged by location. Where there were a small number of eligible voters in a place they may be arranged in alphabetical order by surname, but generally arrangement is by: Authority responsible for administering elections for the area; Parish, Ward, street. Therefore, if you do not know where someone lived you cannot look them up.

It is worth remembering that registers only include those people eligible to vote; who was eligible changed over time. Information for the annual register is compiled in the previous year therefore a register published at the beginning of December may represent the position at a cut of date in October. This published register will then generally be the current register for the following 12 months. Changes of address/occupancy would have been made on a working copy but may not ever be reflected in the published register because the person may move again between the publication of registers.

Registers of Claims [Ref. RC], which give the previous year's list with handwritten amendments and notes on eligibility to vote, date from 1835-1912.