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Half of Brussels failed to vote in May elections

12:10 18/12/2014

In Belgium’s federal elections on May 25, half of the Brussels population voted blank or invalid, was not eligible to vote, or simply chose not to, according to research by geographer Filip De Maesschalck, which appeared in the political magazine Sampol.

De Standaard wrote about the Sampol piece on the May 25 elections, reporting that 1,256,219 people, or 15.7% of those registered to vote in Belgium, submitted either blank or invalid ballots. Moreover, an increasing number of Belgian residents have no right to vote in the parliamentary elections because they do not have Belgian nationality. Such is the case for 880,493 people of voting age living in Belgium, or 9.9% of potential voters.

The research reveals that more than 2 million people of voting age living in Belgium failed to vote, or about a quarter of the population. In Brussels, the figure is about 47%, or almost half of the city’s population.

De Maesschalck’s research raises the question of whether the elections are truly representative.

Written by Robyn Boyle