Polkadot OpenGov allows all stakeholders to vote on proposals or delegate their voting power to others in order to participate in the decision-making process. When you vote your tokens are locked and the lock is removed either if you remove your vote while the referendum is ongoing or once the locking period expires. The same applies when you undelegate your voting power. Once that happens you need to remove these expired locks. In this article, we will explain how to remove them from Polkadot-JS UI.


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Removing referendum requires two extrinsics: one to remove the votes, the other to unlock them. Conveniently, Polkadot-JS UI groups these extrinsics in a single batch call, so expired referendum locks are removed in just one action. Unfortunately, this batch call is not yet supported by Ledger apps. This article will describe the steps to remove referendum locks for non-Ledger and for Ledger accounts.


Check expired referendum locks


By clicking on the arrow icon located at the far right of your account and hovering over the small clock icon next to the referenda locked balance, you can check for any expired locks.


Non-Ledger accounts


To remove all expired referenda locks from a non-Ledger account, follow these steps:


1. Click on the three dots on the right side of your account.


2. Select "Clear expired referenda locks":


3. Then sign and submit the extinsic and all the expired locks will be removed.


Ledger accounts


The two calls need to be issued separately for Ledger accounts. To do that, follow these steps:


1. Go to the "Developer" > "Extrinsics" page on Polkadot-JS UI.


2. Select your Ledger account.


3. On the left drop-down menu, select 'convictionVoting'; on the right, select 'removeVote'. Then enter the referendum index. 

In the example screenshot above, the index of each referendum is shown next to the expired locks. In this example it's only referendum 105.


4. Then submit the transaction and sign it from your Ledger device.


5. Next, you have to send the second extrinsic from the same 'convictionVoting' pallet. 

In the drop-down menu on the right, select "unlock". The required "class" is the index of the track to which the referendum belonged. Check this wiki article to learn the index of each track. In our example, the index is 33 for the "Medium Spender" track. Finally, choose the account you want to remove the lock for. Note that you can issue this extrinsic from any of your accounts. 


6. Then submit and sign the transaction.


If you have more than one expired lock for different tracks, repeat this process for each one you want to remove.