A lot of expat Scots wanted a vote in the last Scottish referendum but, like all elections in the UK, whether referendums or not, eligibility has always been on the basis of registered address, not national or regional origin. I was an British expat for 12 years but I always had a registered UK address and was able to organise a proxy vote. So I never lost the right to vote but many expats did because they moved abroad permanently and lost eligibility.It was a bone of contention that many expats were unable to vote in the Brexit referendum due to lack of a UK address, even though they were in many cases amongst those most directly affected by the result.Maybe the govt has recognised that, or maybe they calculate there are more Tory voting expats than supporters of other parties, but how they will prove eligibility other than through their UK passport I don't know. The passport alone was never enough in the past.As for a future Scottish referendum I can't see the residence criteria changing, which means you'd have to move there, buy or rent a place there, or use a relative's address to get registered. In the UK as a whole, as my wife and I discovered in 2014, it was irrelevant to have a property in Scotland if it wasn't your primary address. In our case that was Putney and you are only allowed one.As an aside, because the Scottish referendum was run under local election rules, EU citizens resident in Scotland could vote - which was not the case in the Brexit referendum. The Scots were also allowed to enfranchise 16 year olds for their ref, and indeed all their local elections.
Jonathan Callaway ● 1865d