How we use your information
The Returning Officer for Aberdeen City processes information about you for the purposes of administering elections and referenda.
Examples of how your personal data is used include:
- Processing and determining candidate nominations, the appointment of agents, publishing statutory notices, producing ballot papers and other poll material
- Administering, managing and recording the poll process
- Maintaining historical records of candidates participating in elections
- Producing and maintaining records of candidates, election agents, sub agents, polling agents, counting agents and postal vote agents as required by statute.
- Administering the election expenses return (candidate spending), holding of statutory returns relating to campaign/candidate spending during poll campaigns and publication of statutory notices regarding the same.
The Returning Officer shares the information with the Council employees involved with the running of the election/referenda, printing companies and postal vote management partners, Police Scotland (if required), electoral staff such as Presiding Officers and Polling Clerks, the Scottish Government, Scottish Parliament, Scottish Office, Cabinet Office or UK Government, as may be required for a particular poll for statutory returns, the Council’s accounts payable team – for dealing with candidates deposits and their return, with certain information being made available to the media and general public.
The Returning Officer is required by law to protect the public funds they administer. In order to prevent and detect fraud, information may be shared with other bodies responsible for auditing or administering public funds.
How long we will keep your information for
The personal data we hold from the process of administering elections or referenda will be deleted when it is no longer required by law, which is 1 year after the poll.
Your rights
You’ve got legal rights about the way the Returning Officer handles and uses your data, which include the right to ask for a copy of it, and to ask us to stop doing something with your data. Please email the Returning Officer on elections@aberdeencity.gov.uk or write to:
The Returning Officer
Aberdeen City Council
Election Office
Town House
Aberdeen
AB10 1FY
See more information about all the rights you have. The Information Commissioner’s Office are responsible for making sure organisations like the Council handle your data properly and in line with the law.
Our legal basis
The Returning Officer is the Data Controller for this information. Whenever we process personal data we have to make sure we have a basis for doing so in data protection law. We understand our basis for processing this information to be Article 6(1)(e) of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This is because processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in the Returning Officer. Personal data concerning your political opinions is classed as ‘Special Category’ data, and as such a secondary legal basis is required for processing this data. The relevant legal basis is the ‘Political Parties’ condition of the ‘Substantial Public Interest’ subsection of the Data Protection Act 2018 (Schedule 1, Part 2, Paragraph 22).