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Absentee voting, electoral arrangement to enable voting by persons unable to appear at the designated polling place because of ill health, vacation or business away from home, and other reasons. The usual method of absentee voting is by mail, although provision is sometimes made for voting at prescribed places in advance of the polling date. Absentee voting requires special administrative arrangements to assure the secrecy and legitimacy of the ballots cast. Within these basic provisions there are variations in detail from country to country.
In all of the European countries, United States, Canada, and in Australia (where voting is compulsory), provisions are made for the casting of absentee votes. Because the proper use of absentee voting facilities is related to education, in the new nations of Asia and Africa, where illiteracy is fairly widespread, absentee voting is either not allowed, as in Nigeria and Uganda, or allowed only on a restricted basis, as in India, Malaysia and Jamaica.
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Where qualifications for electors are not primarily geographical, the postal vote may be the normal form of voting. Such is the case in the voting for the university representatives in the House of Commons of Northern Ireland and for university seats in the Senate of the Republic of Ireland. In European countries in which elections are held on Sundays, persons travelling for pleasure are permitted to cast their votes at polling places other than those where they are registered, provided that they have first obtained a permit from the election officials. They must, however, cast their ballot for candidates from their own constituencies.
