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Can any EU citizen vote in the UK General Election?
Saw on CNN piece on the election that the reporter claimed that all EU citizens living or working in the UK can vote in the General Election, yet I'm pretty sure people I know who live in France, Italy and Spain cannot vote in those countries general elections, so why the inbalance?
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EU citizen living / working in UK can vote in local elections, not General Elections.
The exception is citizens of Irish Republic, who can vote if resident here.
Also Commonwealth citizens resident here can vote.
Pretty standard reporting - from almost any media outlet.
As Philliph said,
Cypriots, Maltese and Irish can vote in UK General elections.
Yes, as I said in another thread, these are exceptions that predate the EU.
Yes
http://www.aboutmyvote.co.uk/who_can_register_to_vote.aspx
So EU citizens resident in the UK can only vote in their home countries. Commonwealth citizens can also only vote once in Europe (ie in the UK). Non-Commonwealth citizens resident in the UK (or anywhere else) can't vote at all. So UK residents with Irish citizenship are the only exception, as presumably they can vote for their own government as well.
Irish citizens resident in the UK cannot vote in Irish elections - you have to live in Ireland and be on the electoral roll there.
So Irish people living in the Uk can only vote in UK elections.
You have to be permanently resident in Ireland to vote there - so Irish citizens cannot vote in Ireland if they live abroad (in UK, USA or anywhere).
If they allowed all the 'expat' Irish to vote there would probably be about 100 million of them - thus dwarfing the 4m who actually live in Ireland.:D
http://www.theolivepress.es/2010/04/06/the-expat-election/
I suppose if Irish elections included all those with Irish citizenship living abroad, they would have one of the biggest elections in the world.