Why half the people in Luxembourg can’t vote

LUXEMBOURG VOTED for a new parliament on October 14th—but 48% of those who live there were not allowed a ballot-paper. Under current rules, voting is compulsory for Luxembourgish nationals who are under 75, but residents who are not citizens cannot take part in national elections.

This is not unusual. Most countries have similar rules. But, according to the Migrant Integration Policy Index, Luxembourg has “one of the most exclusive national democracies in the developed world, with the largest share of adults disenfranchised in national elections”. In comparison, in Germany 7.8m residents, a mere 11% of those of voting age, cannot vote in national elections for the same reason. The reason is Luxembourg’s high population of Eurocrats and other foreign types.

This “democratic deficit” has been debated since the 1980s. After a scandal drove Jean-Claude Juncker’s Christian Social People’s Party (CSV) from government in 2013, the next coalition saw a chance for reform. In 2015 the government ran a referendum to grant a national ballot paper to residents if they had lived in the country for ten years and had voted in local and European elections.

Though it is rare for a country to allow foreign citizens to vote in national elections, there was precedent. New Zealand has the most inclusive system, granting the vote to all permanent residents after one year of residence. Chile does it after five, Malawi after seven and Uruguay after eight. However, on the day, the proposal was quashed by 78% of voters (only citizens were eligible, of course). Right-wingers turned a debate about democratic deficits into one about Luxembourgish identity and language. Others (of course) used the vote to pass judgment on the centre-left coalition.

The legacy of the defeat drags on, with all parties talking of tradition and homeland during the election campaign, and the government carefully keeping quiet about the democratic deficit. It may have been a clever move for the coalition parties, which maintained enough support to govern again, while the once-dominant CSV failed to make a comeback and the Greens, as in Bavaria the same day, did well. A government spokesperson admitted the representation issue remains a problem, but said only that the government was “carrying out further analysis to find the best solution”. It had better get a move on. In just a few years, eligible voters will be a minority.