Periodic Reporting for period 1 - FIRSTTIME (That Special First Time - Boosting Turnout and Satisfaction amongst First Time Voters)
Reporting period: 2016-01-01 to 2017-06-30
FIRSTTIME is a project that aimed to make citizens' first election 'special' and in that way, improve the satisfaction, turnout and long-term repeated turnout of first time voters. The project involved close collaboration with Election Management Bodies, and involved field experiments organised jointly with Election Management Bodies with debriefing questionnaires, interviews of first time voters, focus groups with first time voters. Project fieldwork took place in the UK, South Africa, US, and France. The underlying idea of FIRSTTIME is that at the moment, across countries, first time voters are just treated like any other. Yet, we know that psychologically, teenagers' and young adults' first times matter a lot and shape their future perceptions and experiences, and indeed, we found that participating in one of the first two elections of one's life makes one likely to be a lifelong participant, whilst abstaining in both of those first two opportunities could make us become chronic abstentionists. We also know that they envisage those first time with a mixture of excitement and apprehension, and FIRSTTIME aimed to use that to improve their preparation, satisfaction and participation. Our work first consisted of trying to understand the types of initiatives that could be taken to make young people's first vote special, and how that specificity should be envisaged so that we capitalise on the excitement of one's first vote without ostracising or embarrassing first time voters. We then came up with a series of 30 proposed protocols that could be used to improve first time voters' experience and participation at three different stages of the electoral process: pre-election, on election day, and post election. Protocols range from organising specific school-level debates on the election or a mentoring system to first time voters' happy hours in polling stations, or even dedicated first time voters polling stations, and first time voters parties or yearbooks. After some encouraging first projects, our team continues to test the long term impact of some of the protocols on improving the quality of electoral democracy through the experience and long term participation of first time voters.