SCOTLAND

Case Study - Voter Engagement with young people in the Scotland (Spring 2017)

Campaign launch to get 16 and 17 year olds ReadyToVote in council elections More than 200 high schools across Scotland ran electoral registration and voting workshops for pupils on 1 March 2017 to mark the launch of the Electoral Commission’s ReadyToVote campaign.
The campaign, which is being run in partnership with education bodies and councils across Scotland,  aims to ensure that as many 16 and 17 year olds as possible are registered and able to vote at the Scottish council elections  on 4 May – the first Scotland wide council elections at which 16 and 17 year olds are eligible to vote. Nearly 80,000 16 and 17 year olds registered to vote ahead of the Scottish Parliament election last year and 78% of them claimed to have voted in the poll. The deadline to register ahead of the Scottish council elections in May is 17 April, Easter Monday.
Andy O’Neill, Head of the Electoral Commission in Scotland said: “Councils are responsible for so many services that are important to young people, whether that be schools, transport or sporting facilities. So we don’t want young people to miss out on having their say in the council elections just because they aren’t registered or don’t know how to vote.
A full copy of the Ready to Vote toolkit including infographics, example tweets and factsheets can be found on the Electoral Commission website:
http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0014/220190/May-2017-Ready-to-vote-toolkit.pdf
Public awareness and the UK referendum on membership of the European Union (June 2016). Under the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act (PPERA), the UK Electoral Commission has a responsibility to provide public information during a referendum. Below are some examples of the campaign materials and images used by the Electoral Commission. The overall campaign was designed to support voters to participate fully and to help them to cast their vote with confidence.
A voting guide was delivered to the UK’s 28 million households and a wide range of communication channels were used to raise awareness. The guide was at the centre of the campaign contained impartial information on the referendum and how to vote, including: eligibility, postal voting, proxy voting and an example ballot paper with instructions on how to complete it. A full copy of the guide can be downloaded here:
http://www.aboutmyvote.co.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0010/203410/EU-Referendum-voting-guide_England-and-Scotland.pdf
The supporting television advert for the campaign can be watched on Youtube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYDjTJ8kuFk
The Electoral Commission campaign also included tailored communications to armed forces personnel. The advertising used imagery that represented the three main branches of the armed forces (the Army, the Navy and the Royal Air Force). In addition, we ran full page advertising in Navy News, Soldier and RAF News – publications popular amongst armed forces personnel. Both strands of advertising (that targeting British citizens abroad and that targeting members of the armed forces) ran on an earlier timeframe than the advertising in the UK to take into account the logistics of international postal services. It also encouraged voters to register for a proxy vote to significantly mitigate this issue.
The Electoral Commission worked with the Football Supporters’ Federation to secure a page in the booklet they delivered to fans who would be attending Euro 2016, which spanned across June and July. Infographics with a specific message were used to target people attending Euro 2016 football tournament. The Euro 2016 post in English generated 2.5 million impressions on Twitter. This is a useful example of how to tie together a campaign with major events happening in the run up to a poll.
Working together with major social media platforms also proved an effective way of reaching large numbers of voters. With Twitter, the Electoral Commission devised a two-pronged campaign which saw them produce two bespoke neon emojis to match the overall campaign branding.
The first emoji was a neon tick which appeared every time people used the hashtag ‘#EURefReady’ between 6 and 7 June. The second was a neon ballot box with an ‘X’, which appeared with the popular ‘#EURef’ hashtag from 7 June until 10pm on polling day.‘#EURefReady’ was used in over 40,000 tweets by 25,000 users.