“This way of voting may be entirely logical to Dutch people, but in an international setting there is no such thing as a ‘common sense’ approach; everyone’s context is different,” Erard said over the phone. His problem was that it wasn’t clear to him whether he should vote for one single candidate, or one from each list. “You have to give clear instructions to people who might be used to a different voting system, or who have never voted before. Otherwise you exclude those people from the process, and that’s not exactly democratic. I emailed the election bureau and they explained it to me, but it should just be written on the voting page. Now people might drop out, or vote for the wrong person by accident.”
Students are also often not aware of how to vote, or even that they can! This year, there are banners with ‘UM Elections’ outside a number of university buildings, hoping to raise awareness of the election among the students. Surrounding them, members of the student parties explain to their fellow students how it works.
In a bid for fairness, the parties change location each day, because, as the members of NovUM standing outside the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences on Monday readily admit, students often vote for the first party that approaches them. “But a few people did say they would look up the party manifestoes,” they said. Adding, “It’s a shame, you want them to vote for you because they agree with your views, not because they don’t know who the other parties are.”