Removing expired democracy locks

When you vote for a Governance referendum, your tokens are locked at least while the referendum is up for vote. Once the referendum ends, the lock may expire or it may remain for a longer period, depending on your conviction and whether you voted with the winning side or not.

But regardless of the lock period, the lock will expire eventually and once that happens you need to manually remove it to make the locked balance transferable again. The lock isn't removed automatically. Here, we will show you how to remove these expired democracy or referendum locks.

If you voted on referenda, click on the arrow icon on the far right of your account and then hover over the little clock icon next to the democracy locked balance you can see if there are any locks that have expired:

To remove an expired democracy lock, follow these steps:

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

2. Select "Clear expired democracy locks":

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