Online Voting for the Youth Parliament of the City Buchholz
In 2015, a total of 3,000 young people in the town of Buchholz (just south of Hamburg, Germany) were called to elect their representatives for a new youth parliament. A youth parliament is involved in planning projects in communities and city councils to represent the interests of children and young people.
The city deliberately opted to rely solely on the online option in order to keep the costs of the election as low as possible. The election supervisor regarded the automated and secure ballot-counting as a particular advantage of an online election: The POLYAS election software guaranteed the correct count of votes within the shortest possible time and disenabled double voting.
Through the online election, the electoral officer also did not need to hire electoral workers and could therefore reduce the costs of the election considerably.
Cost effective and convenient online voting
By opting for an online election, the city of Buchholz could reduce costs. In a manual election "the costs would have been significantly higher," said Olaf Blohm, election organiser of the youth parliament election of the city Buchholz.
Through the convenient online election in the city Buchholz, "lower personnel and material expenses" were required. The margin of error "caused by humans" could be reduced to a minimum, because an online election is not dependent on postal services or the availability of personnel.
Thus, the online youth parliamentary election is a practical and safe election form which went smoothly for the German city Buchholz.
Learn more about the benefits of online youth parliamentary elections for your community!
Online voting is attractive to young voters
With the introduction of online voting, the city Buchholz adapts to the user behavior of its young voters and presents itself as a forward-looking city in an increasingly digital world. Especially elections for youth panels can reach their young electorate where they reside: online!
While other youth parliamentary elections are struggling with a low turnout of less than 5%, the city Buchholz was able to achieve a turnout of 9.8% in its first online youth parliament election. The electoral officer Olaf Blohm therefore reaches a positive conclusion:
"This election type is highly recommended for the election of a youth parliament. We will continue to use online voting in the future."
POLYAS Tip: To fully adhere to all privacy policies, you may leave the electoral roll at home. Instead, send us an anonymised list of fixed personal data (eg. date of birth) and a serial number for the clear assignment of ballots. On this basis, we can create the login information for your electorate while getting no insight into your data. Request a non-binding offer now
Promote youth democracy
The establishment of youth parliaments makes a major contribution to the promotion of democratic understanding among young people, because the cooperation in political issues in the community motivates the children and young people to critically participate in society. Thus, the (non-politically-voting) minors may express their interests to decision-makers and learn about the mechanisms of decision-making in the political sphere.