Engaging with Newly Enfranchised Voters

Part of 3. Questions to the Senedd Commission – in the Senedd at 3:23 pm on 13 January 2021.

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Photo of Huw Irranca-Davies Huw Irranca-Davies Labour 3:23, 13 January 2021

I really welcome the innovations that have been done for the provision online in these difficult circumstances, and I think that it's commendable. I just wonder whether we are missing a trick here for the future—although it's probably too late for this one. I wonder if I could ask your views on whether the Commission would be willing to explore a concept that I strongly support—which they do in other countries such as Sweden, and so on—where they actually use their resources to provide a proper, actual election going on in schools, contemporaneous with the election going on in wider society, for 14-year-olds, for 15-year-olds and so on, so that they are ready. I just wonder, in the future, would this be something that the Commission, and the expertise that it has at its fingertips, would be willing to explore—to take the lead role in doing this within our schools, to prepare young people for democratic engagement?