Scotland: Entitlement cards inspire young Scots to vote

The Young Scot card, highlighted as a potential model for the opportunity card proposed in the Youth Matters green paper, has been piloted as part of an online voting system in three areas of Scotland.

The evaluation report for the project, eNation, will be launched next month. A key finding will be that linking the cards to the voting process has increased young people's willingness to vote.

The pilot, a partnership between youth information agency Young Scot and the Scottish Youth Parliament (SYP), involved 14- to 25-year-olds in Angus and North Lanarkshire using their cards to vote for SYP members. In Argyll and Bute, high-school pupils used them to vote for members of their school council, and in Dumfries and Galloway young people used the cards to elect their student council. The 35,000 project is funded by the Scottish Executive,YouthLink Scotland and The Electoral Commission. Young Scot hopes the report will secure the funding needed to roll the system out across Scotland by 2007, and hopes it will lead to use of the cards in local and general elections.