Zaanstad to give voter a sticker

The Nieuw-West district and especially the Zaanstad municipality set an example in how they plan to raise turnout in the 3 March local election, a study by Dounya and News from Amsterdam among 17 municipalities and districts finds. Local governments spend tens of thousands of euros on voter mobilisation, but some of the money is spent on activities that will probably only have a limited impact.

The governments that participated in the study plan to spend over 50,000 to over 100,000 euros on voter mobilisation. They spend the money primarily on media and mailings and to a lesser extent on meetings and voter aids. With their activities, they hope to raise turnout by a few percentage points to 10 percentage points, which appears ambitious but not impossible. Some target specific groups, most often young eligible voters.

Internationally, extensive research has been done on the effectiveness of different methods of voter mobilisation. Using call centres, sending leaflets and general media campaigns have little impact. What does seem to work, is sending young eligible voters a reminder by text message just before the election. An approach that definitely works consists in addressing people personally to convince them to vote.

The Zaanstad Municipality plans to reach at least 10,000 people by having volunteers go door-to-door. In addition, people can sign up for a text message reminder and people who have voted will be given a little sticker. In America, such ‘I voted’ stickers are quite common. They provoke discussions and people proudly have their photo taken with their stickers.

At the previous election, the De Baarsjes District successfully worked with volunteer organisations to raise turnout, but that approach has been dropped. The new West District, which De Baarsjes will be part of, instead will try to raise turnout by cutting out texts in flower beds calling on people to vote.

Report (in Dutch, pdf). Image: aperture_lag