European Elections in Portugal — what are the options to vote for?
As a member of the Global Shapers Lisbon hub, I led a project aiming at increasing voter turnout in Portugal during the 2019 elections for the European Parliament. The main outcome of the project was a webpage where voters could find all relevant information about the different parties, answering the question what are the parties which I can vote for in these elections and what do they stand for?
The page was published at www.europeias2019.com and it contained the following information: a table listing all 17 parties, with respective party name, list leader, European political group affiliation, link to party website, link to election manifesto, link to list of candidates in party’s list, email contact.
We collected all this information by researching online and exchanging emails with the different parties. Besides, the page also contained a useful links section with links to: official website with instructions on where to vote, quizz which helped find parties with best match to voter’s ideas, ranking of members of European Parliament, and videos of national debates with party candidates.
The feedback received by the project team was very positive, including people who quoted the website as having been their tool for choosing who to vote for. The page was referenced in three different online newspapers (Observador, Jornal Económico, Expresso) and widely shared on social networks and websites such as Reddit. Circa 5.000 users visited the website in the days leading up to the election.
Thus, we believe that this was a successful experiment towards increasing voter turnout and improving voter decision making. We recommend repeating the project in other elections, with extra effort in contacts with media and social media influencers as this was the primary driver of visits to the website.
Democracy is the best governance method we know, but it takes effort on part of the citizens to guide the political power with their vote. This is our small contribution to helping us all make better and more informed voting decisions.
