{"id":87904,"date":"2018-06-14T11:05:39","date_gmt":"2018-06-14T09:05:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.erasmusmagazine.nl\/en\/?p=87904"},"modified":"2025-12-19T11:23:01","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T10:23:01","slug":"opkomst-voor-studentenraadsverkiezingen-daalt-overal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.erasmusmagazine.nl\/en\/2018\/06\/14\/opkomst-voor-studentenraadsverkiezingen-daalt-overal\/","title":{"rendered":"Drop in voter turnout for student council elections at Dutch universities"},"content":{"rendered":"

Looking into the matter, the Hoger Onderwijs Persbureau (higher education press office) revealed that the stronger position of the participation in decision-making bodies hasn\u2019t led to higher voter turnout among students. Fewer students went to the ballot box at almost all universities.<\/p>\n

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    \n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\u2018Worryingly low voter turnout\u2019 for university elections\n\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t<\/h3>\n\n\t\t
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      \u2018Definitely worrying\u2019, \u2018astonishingly low\u2019, and \u2018nothing to write home about\u2019 were the descriptions that appeared in university media with regard to voter turnout respectively for the council elections in Groningen (26 percent),\u00a0Rotterdam (12 percent)<\/a>\u00a0and Leiden (18 percent).<\/p>\n

      At the University of Amsterdam, where activists campaigned for more say in decision-making, voter turnout was the lowest: 11 percent of students went to the trouble of going to the ballot box. The other Amsterdam-based university, the VU, didn\u2019t fare much better with 16 percent of students voting.<\/p>\n

      While the voter turnout in Rotterdam was one percent higher than in Amsterdam, students from three EUR faculties were not eligible to vote because not enough election candidates were fielded. These students haven\u2019t been included in these figures. If they had been, then voter turnout would be well under 10 percent.<\/p>\n

      More rights<\/h2>

      Thanks to the Enhanced Governance Powers (Educational Institutions) Act, participation in decision-making bodies have more of a voice, more responsibilities and more rights. For example, members help decide how the millions from the student loan system will be spent. In spite of this, voter turnout dropped almost everywhere and at some universities it is proving difficult to even find a sufficient number of candidates to run.<\/p>\n

      Tilburg remains the university with the highest voter turnout at 46 percent, but even there fewer students voted this year. \u201cThis could be because of a new regulation stipulating that fewer election campaigners are allowed on campus\u201d, writes the news site Univers<\/a>. The \u2018elections circus\u2019 got so out of hand in Tilburg that the university felt compelled to introduce more regulations governing campaigning.<\/p>\n

      Voter turnout in Eindhoven, Delft, Nijmegen and Twente was above 35 percent, but these universities were also unable to escape a drop in student voters. Only Utrecht (27 percent) had something to celebrate by improving on its record voter turnout from last year by a half percentage point, reports news site DUB<\/a>.<\/p>\n