Our regular columnist Molly Quell thinks that more internationals need to avail themselves of their right to vote. 

It was a beautiful sunny Wednesday afternoon and I was walking through the city centre with my husband, ice cream cone in hand. The weather was perfect and we were having a lovely outing. The most romantic outing anyone can have, in fact.

We had just voted.

As we strolled, I passed by an acquaintance. A fellow international who has lived in the Netherlands for a considerable amount of time. I stopped to say hello and I asked if she was on her way to vote.

“Is there an election today?”

I nearly choked on my mango sorbet.

Composing myself, I prodded further and discovered that she had no idea she was even eligible to vote.

Participation is always lower in local than in national elections. In the 2025 national elections, 78.3% of eligible voters cast a ballot. Only 53.7% turned out on Wednesday.

And that 53.7% is a good number. More people voted in this year’s Dutch municipal elections than four years ago, by nearly 3%.

Unfortunately, non-Dutch nationals cast way fewer ballots than their Dutch counterparts.

Researchers at Utrecht University have looked into voter turnout in local elections in the Netherlands and found that my acquaintance is not alone.

In the 2022 elections (data is of course not yet fully available for 2026), approximately 400,000 of the 13.6 million eligible voters in the 2022 elections did not have Dutch nationality, according to Dutch statistics agency CBS.

In some municipalities, they make up a significant portion of the electorate. And yet their turnout is, on average, 20 – 30% lower than Dutch citizens.

This year seemed to be the year that both politicians and the Dutch media woke up to the fact that internationals are a huge untapped well of voters.

“In the 20 years that Dutch News has been around, we have tried to encourage our readers to make the most of their democratic right to vote by explaining how the election system works, what the parties stand for and what the big issues are in the cities where most of you live.

For the most part, it has been an uphill battle – an endless round of phone calls and emails to council offices looking for information, and often being ignored or being told “I don’t know”.

That is now, however, changing.”

That’s what our editor Robin Pascoe wrote in her column just ahead of elections on Wednesday.

I got dispatched to Utrecht and Maastricht to talk to local voters and those running for office. I also personally witnessed the editor herself accosting random visitors at the IamExpat fair, demanding to know if they planned to vote.

The Dutch media also seemed to be paying more attention. This year, Trouw, the Financieele Dagblad, the NRC, the Parool and the Groene Amsterdammer have all published articles about the importance of the international vote.

Take that step

Here’s the thing. If you want to be important, you have to actually vote.

The Dutch make it so easy to vote you almost have to go out of your way to avoid it. They mail you your voting pass. They mail you a sample ballot. They put up giant signs everywhere with all of the parties.

There are polling stations in cities in the Netherlands like there are potholes in the highways in Belgium.

In the 15-minute walk to the polling station where I voted, I passed no fewer than five other polling stations.

There are plenty of reasons you might not have voted. Maybe you didn’t know you could. (International residents who don’t have Dutch nationality but could vote because they are EU nationals or have lived in the country for at least five years.)

Or maybe your municipality didn’t provide any information in English about voting. Or you’re an international student who is more worried about housing than voting.

Vote for change

Here is another thing. If you want all this to change, you have to vote for people who will change it. And that means you have to vote.

On our stroll home, I remarked to my Dutch husband that the weather was lovely. And he replied “It is a little chilly though.”

It was 16 degrees with perfectly blue skies.

The Dutch can complain about anything. But at least he voted.

If you’d like to share your thoughts about voting or not voting, you can do so here