<p>Voter Participation</p>

Part of 2. 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:15 pm on 4 October 2016.

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Photo of Carwyn Jones Carwyn Jones Labour 2:15, 4 October 2016

It is absolutely key to it. When I meet people on the doorstep and they tell me that they don’t vote, I ask them to repeat what they’ve just said but without actually using their voice. And I say, ‘Well, there you are, you haven’t got a voice if you don’t vote. If you said to me, “I do vote, but why should I vote for you?”—then politicians take notice.' It’s sad that we’ve seen a decline, I’d say since the mid 1990s, in voter participation, and if we’re honest as politicians, it’s very difficult to understand the reason or reasons for that. We know that in Scotland the turnout was high in the independence referendum. But one of the things we have done, for example, is to fund an NUS Wales and Democracy Club website, ‘Where Do I Vote?’ It was launched in March of this year. It enables students and others to find the polling station they were registered at and it covered 10 of the 22 local authority areas, accounting for around 47 per cent of Welsh electors.