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School Elections Give Young People an Early Voting Experience

Nov 6, 2023 at 11:14 AM Update: 34 minutes ago

More than three hundred schools are participating in the so-called School Elections this month. Schoolchildren and MBO students can vote for parties that participate in the House of Representatives elections. The votes do not officially count, but the young people experience what it is like to vote.

Since November 1, secondary school students and MBO students have been able to vote for political parties participating in the House of Representatives elections on November 22.

These shadow elections are being held for the thirtieth time by knowledge institute ProDemos, exactly sixty years after the first edition. The organization tells NU.nl that about 325 schools are participating. Schools can still register in the coming weeks. The results will be announced in The Hague on November 21. Students will therefore discuss with the politicians present.

In the shadow elections of the Provincial Council elections earlier this year, GroenLinks received 13 percent of the votes. D66 finished in second place with almost 12 percent, followed by PVV (almost 11 percent). More than 25,800 students and MBO students then cast their votes. During the previous House of Representatives elections in 2021, more than 50,000 students participated at 284 schools.

‘Helps lower the threshold for actually voting’

“You learn the most about elections by experiencing how elections work yourself,” can be read on the site of the student elections. “That is why the Student Elections are organized in such a way that the voting process for the Student Elections is comparable to that of real elections. Students can vote in a polling station specially set up at school. The young people vote on a ballot paper with a red pencil.”

The ballots are collected in a ballot box. The votes are then counted by students who function as polling station workers. “The School Elections help to lower the threshold for young people to actually vote in real elections.”

Image: Bart van Vliet

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PoliticsInternationalHouse of Representatives elections
2023-11-06 10:14:48


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