Can I Really Vote in Denmark?

In this episode, we explain how to vote in Denmark, who is eligible to vote, and why every vote matters. Whether you’re an international resident or a first-time voter, you’ll learn how local and regional elections work, what you need to bring on election day, and how your participation helps shape Denmark’s future.

The podcast is made by AMIS (an NGO that has over 30 years of history of making projects aimed at developing better opportunities and inclusion in Denmark and Europe), Nyt Europa (an NGO that works for a sustainable and democratic EU) and Last Week in Denmark (a weekly newsletter about Danish latest news with over 100 000 monthly readers, available in 8 languages). 

Transcript

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Speaker 1  0:00  
She had tears in her eyes. You could read joy and sadness on her face. She voted for the first time in her life in another country than the one she was born in. This is an image I will never forget from alborg elections. Hello everyone. My name is Narcis George matake, and I'm trying to make Denmark more inclusive since 2012

Speaker 2  0:30  
My name is Derek Hartman, and I've been living here since 2017

Unknown Speaker  0:35  
Welcome to vote home, season two,

Speaker 1  0:39  
five, Episode limited edition, where we're going to focus on trying to uncover the secrets of local and regional elections for this year, 18, November 2025 this is a show produced by kalpita osale and hosted by me and me Derek. We will first start with an episode where we will try to cover like the basics, the essentials that you should know to prepare yourself to maybe even vote for the first time. And then we will actually invite in the next episodes, people that have a lot of knowledge on each topic and try to support you in the process of voting for the first time. So Derek, have you ever voted in Denmark?

Speaker 2  1:21  
Yes, I voted in my first election four years ago in 2021 and I have to say, I think that this is the podcast I needed at that time. Yeah, because you know this, we've talked about it a little bit, but I definitely needed some help, because I did not nail the execution of the vote. Yes, technically I voted. I'm not sure that my vote actually counted, because I made some mistakes when I was in the booth. And I guess I should say, in my own defense, beforehand, I wanted to do some research. I wanted to get a little educated. I went to a candidates debate that was in English, which was super helpful, that I got to know some candidates. And perhaps that's where things went, a little off for me, because there were you that I liked. So, you know, I went and I did the research. And I'm classically not good at making decisions, but a bit indecisive. I just wanted to spread the love around. So when I got inside the boot, my goodness, when I got inside to cast my vote, you know, I have the vote card in front of me, and I picked more than one candidate, which I believe means that I invalidated my choice. It's

Speaker 1  2:32  
quite unfortunate. You can only have 1x amongst the many, many names you can see here. I can see why you got confused. I mean, when you see such a long list. Like, it's, it's kilometric, right? Yeah, Jesus Christ is so long, yeah? And you see so many names, and you see these different letters and different boxes, like, okay, maybe I can have one vote per box.

Speaker 2  2:50  
Yeah, it was very confusing. And I thought, surely, there are so many names they can't want me to pick just one. I think there's, how is that

Unknown Speaker  2:57  
even possible? I mean, how do you even do that?

Speaker 2  2:59  
There's, I think, over 300 candidates in Copenhagen or something, yeah, at least this year. So I certainly needed some help, and I needed this before that's what we're here, right? Yeah, learn from my mistakes, and this year I'm gonna nail it, and I hope everybody listening does, because if you are here, then you've already taken the right steps in figuring out how to vote and what's important to you in the process. And I only did one of those things last time. You always tried. I tried, I tried. I really did try. In some ways, I really voted a lot.

Speaker 1  3:32  
Yes, I really wanted to spread that democratic love out there. Like I liked you, I like you. I like you. Go do something I wanted to make up for and then you called everyone. I voted I voted you. I voted you as well, and you as well, and hopefully they don't know each other. It was like, did Derek call you and tell you that he voted for you? Yeah, me too.

Speaker 2  3:51  
It was like an episode of The Bachelor, like I gave out, like I gave out 12 different roses. And really, I should have just skipped to the end and given out one now I know this.

Speaker 1  4:03  
I'll be prepared this year, and hopefully all of you will be too. Should we go into the day essentials of voting? Yes, please tell

Speaker 2  4:09  
us, because this, again, is what I needed before. But yeah, let's talk about, well, first, who is eligible. Tell us the essentials. What do people need to know?

Speaker 1  4:15  
First of all, who can vote? If you are a European Union citizen, which means those 27 member states, or if you are from Switzerland or from the Nordic states, you have the right to vote from day one. Okay, the moment you got your yellow card in your hand, congratulations. You are a voter. Regardless of how long you have been here, registration

Speaker 2  4:36  
is compulsory. Is that correct? So you're automatically registered. As soon as you get that yellow card, you don't need to do anything else. Registration is automated, not compulsory. Automated, I'm sorry, automated, so you are automatically eligible, exactly right, not compulsory, as far as you have to do exactly through with it, automatically registered Absolutely.

Speaker 1  4:54  
And the second thing is that if you're not a European, then you have to wait four years. Years of continuous living in Denmark. It's a bit unfortunate that that's the case. Used to be three years, but they modify the law to make it four years, because they can, they cannot really touch the European vote, but they can make it more difficult for the non Europeans if they want to another reason of why people should show up and vote and make sure there's people out there who protect, for example, your right to vote. So that's already a very concrete case of

Speaker 2  5:24  
why you should bother, right? Because they have the power to further restrict, they

Speaker 1  5:28  
just take it away completely. Yeah, yeah. Not for us, for Europeans, of course, but for for

Speaker 2  5:33  
you, yeah, as a non, as a non citizen, you know, I was, I was quite lucky, because I I moved in 2017 so that as soon as I hit four years, lo and behold, very genuine, yeah, there was an election right in 2021, I did not expect that I would be able to vote. Luckily, it was a little bit before the Val card, the voting card, came to me, but I had heard from somebody that there was going to be a debate quite close to me, and that it was in English, and that I should go to learn more about it, and that was a lot that was like overwhelming, because I didn't even think that I would be eligible. I didn't think that I'd be included in that because I knew I wouldn't be able to vote on the national level until I was a citizen. That is correct, yes. How does that work? What's the difference with with those two elections? The

Speaker 1  6:17  
difference is that when you vote the national elections, you vote in the parliament. Okay? And the parliament is supposed to be like symbol of the citizens, like a place where citizens decide on a national level things related to citizens. That's why, for example, in immigration, it is on a national level, not on a local level. But when you're talking about local level, you're talking what you're talking about busses, you're talking about kindergartens, you're talking about schools, elderly care, you're talking about swimming pools, for God's sake, in libraries, those are things that you're using every day, so they're not conditioned by you being a citizen or not. So that's why it was kind of a global move, where more and more countries have started to realize that local level is for locals, not for just citizens. And I think it was in 1995 that they introduced this in Denmark as well, that non Europeans and Europeans could vote for local and regional elections. But unfortunately, it took a long time, like when I discovered that I can vote, it was in 2012 and I realized that the Danes didn't know about it, the politicians didn't know about it. The internationals didn't know about it. People really did not talk about it at all, like there was like a secret. You can say there was a law right there, but nobody touched it. Nobody wanted to let you know. Do something about it. Now things are different, obviously, after after. Since we started this long campaign, since 2012 things have changed. People have started to talk about people are more aware compared to the past, but it's still a long struggle ahead to get to the place where we are supposed to feel like we're really part of democracy here, right? So that's why we're doing it this, right? That's why we're doing vote home. So 18, November, 2025, you can vote on Election Day. It's going to be a festival. You can say it's going to be fun. People really go out there to to enjoy the day. Yeah, and it's strange because it's during a working day.

Speaker 2  8:09  
It's on a Tuesday. Most people are busy

Speaker 1  8:13  
or come from work and have an excuse to just, you know, I go vote. So what's going to do about it? It's it is obligation. So the employer cannot just say, You know what, you cannot go. Sure. They actually have to let you go to go and vote. So you can just, you know, hey, I'm gonna go vote now. But if you don't want to vote on Election Day, say, Oh God, I'm traveling on 18th of November, whatever. I'm in a business trip somewhere. Luckily, you have six weeks to vote in Denmark. Wow. Every day, besides weekends, you can vote in Denmark

Unknown Speaker  8:43  
for six weeks. They make it really easy.

Speaker 1  8:46  
Okay, you don't have time that day, no problem. Here you go a whole block of six weeks where you can go to your nearest library or to the nearest Citizen Service. Yeah, just go and vote. All you have to do is bring your yellow card say, Hey, I would like to brew stem, which is means early vote. And then they will give you two letters, like, inside you'll find a piece of paper, like a white piece of paper, where you have to do two things. You have to put the letter of the party in a corner and the name of the candidate. You actually have to write the name of the candidate. You don't select it with an X, like in the voting day, okay, so you actually write in the candidate, please write the name of the candidate correctly to be valid,

Speaker 2  9:24  
so the letter that corresponds to the party that they are in, yeah, and then the name of the candidate correct, okay, and not multiple.

Speaker 1  9:31  
If you don't want to vote for a candidate, you just leave the letter of the party, okay, say, I don't want to select a specific candidate, I just want to support the party as a whole, which is fine, yeah, you just leave the letter in the corner, and then it's

Speaker 2  9:44  
valid, okay? And then at that point, it will be a ranking based on who in that particular party gets the most votes. Is that how it would work? Yours would go to them. It would just be your vote. Would just go for their candidate.

Speaker 1  9:56  
When you vote the party, the vote goes for May. Leave for the number one on the list. Okay? So the rule is that number one on the list is kind of like the main candidate leadership. Usually it's the mayor candidate. Okay? Because you don't vote directly for the mayor. Yes, in Denmark, you vote for party members of the city council or members of the Regional Council, and then they internally vote for who should be the mayor or who should be the president of the region, in the case of the regional level. So that's, that's how it happens, right? So I would say that the way it happens is like this. Let's say there's a list a the Social Democrats, right? That's the letter A, yes, always first on the ballot. That shall savaris, there's a list of 25 candidates from the same list. All 25 candidates gather the votes together? The party votes, plus all the personal votes, becomes one pool of votes. And let's say that is 20% of all votes, then 20% of all seats will be given to that party. Okay, okay. So now this party, depending on which municipality, if it's small or big, but let's say all work, for example, has 31 seats, so 20% will be what, seven eight seats. The first seven, eight most voted from that party will get those seats. So even though the party might have prioritized other seven people, people will decide who should be there. So that's what's really beautiful about the Danish democracy is like, even if, let's say the party, I don't know, internally, they managed to, you know, kiss up to the top leadership and got a good spot on the list. It's irrelevant. The spot on the list is absolutely irrelevant unless you're number one.

Speaker 2  11:31  
Okay, so the voters really decide if they go the name and the level of the person, yeah,

Speaker 1  11:36  
you can be number last on the list, and still, actually, it's very good to be last on the list, because many people are like, I don't know who to vote for. You know what? I see this guy got the last spot. And it's not, not so unusual that last on the list usually gets a seat. Wow, yeah. So it's actually either you fight to be number one or two, because sometimes people okay, I don't really like number one. Let's just go to two, because sounds like someone that's okay, close enough to be, like to the level of a mayor, or you go on the other side and you press an x, if you're in between, it doesn't matter then anymore. And the way they vote in here is quite simple. First they'll think, Do I have any neighbors running? Okay, I don't know any neighbors on the list. Do I have any colleagues from work running? No, okay, who should I vote? Any family? No. Did any friends of mine recommend anyone? Hey, I remember that poster. She looked good. Yeah, how about that?

Speaker 2  12:29  
That's what I was gonna that's what I was thinking in my head. Like, you know, sometimes the only familiarity that you have with any of these names or any of these people is those placards that we see all over, those posters that are hung up with people's faces on it. So you basically have the mug shots all over town, or, you know, the glamor shots of people. And you know, you're maybe just making a decision like you're playing, you know, smash pass

Speaker 1  12:50  
on pretty much. Yes. I mean, to be honest, it's difficult to really select someone based on their ideology, because, think about it, you will get some people visiting your home door to door, a lot of them just be ready for it, for, for October, November. You'll be visited

Speaker 2  13:06  
a lot every event. So if there's an outside festival, if there's

Speaker 1  13:09  
your mailbox, will be full with, with with political advertising, which, by the way, it's legal to come to your mailbox. Don't complain about it. No, it's serious. They cannot say, No, I talk to that, yeah, you must be open to receive political advertising from all parties. Okay, that's how democracy works. There's not no recourse for that. No, yeah. I mean, you can complain about it. So, so, yeah, that's, that's how I would, I would go about it. You have to understand that when you select a candidate, you have to think of, what do I have in common with that candidate? And many times, people get lost in that process, so they just vote a party. But many people do know someone. Think about it. I mean, you have a city of 30,000 50,000 people, those are kind of like average Danish city, right? And they're such a city, you probably will have a city council of around 31 seats, and you will have maybe around 200 250 candidates for those 31 seats, people will be very, very split. So that's why you can enter the city council with maybe, what, 500 to 1000 person votes. Wow, that's it, because it's very split, right? Think about I will first take my co workers, my neighbors, my family, my childhood friends and their friends and connections, my network, and then whoever I was able to convince on the street, campaigning all through the letterbox, through the how good I look on the posters, through the messages, maybe that are transmitted on social media, and then I make the mat.

Speaker 2  14:43  
So that personal connection really is a big part of getting people into these positions, because it doesn't take that much, because there are so many seats, it's super splits the vote, and because the vote is split so much,

Speaker 1  14:55  
yeah, so that's why internationals have a chance. Yeah, every city in Denmark has. At least five to 10% internationals, yeah, which means that every city can elect at least one international candidate in the city council, if the internationals would bother to vote. Yes, that's another problem. Are we going

Speaker 2  15:13  
to go? But now we've told them how, and we've told them when, and you know what the process actually looks like, and how to find out the information about it, and hopefully they won't make the mistake I did.

Speaker 1  15:23  
So just to recap, remember, when you go to the voting day, you have only 1x you can put next to the party letter, which means you vote for the whole list, or you put next to a name which you prefer, which means you have a personal vote. I want this specific person to be elected into the city council, because then you can actually call up this specific person which specific person. Be like, Hey, dude, I voted for you. Remember that it's okay to do that,

Speaker 2  15:47  
and you're automatically registered, and you get the voting card right in the mail. I

Speaker 1  15:51  
have something to mention there. Yeah, please. Most people will get the election card in their mail. Unfortunately, problems appear. Sometimes the voting card never arrives. It's gets lost through because of delivery. Maybe your mailbox was full of advertising stuff that for the election you lost the voting card. That's fine, as long as you know you have the right to vote. You don't need actually, the voting card. Okay, if you want to wait for election day, go to the nearest school, just show your yellow card and say, Hey, I didn't get the voting card. I know I'm allowed to vote. Please tell me where is my voting section. Okay? And then they will tell you where the voting section is, and you will go there to vote. So don't freak out if you don't get the voting card. It happens. Unfortunately, it did happen to people. Doesn't mean you don't have the right it just simply means it got lost, or maybe you, by mistake, even threw it away. You didn't know what the hell was that another bill. I don't want to open it. You know, it's never good news in the mailbox these days, right? So they make it

Speaker 2  16:45  
easy all throughout the process. Even if you don't get the card, you can still take care of you.

Speaker 1  16:50  
Yes, wow. And if, unfortunately, at least, it used to be the situation in the past, in 2013 when we started to, you know, talk about this in Denmark, there were still people in the voting sections who would be like, Yeah, but I don't think you're allowed to vote. If you're not a citizen, educate them. Educate them. You'll be like, but you don't speak Danish. And what that doesn't mean anything. I have the right to vote. If you do not know this, please call the boss of this voting section. Bring the law, and I'll show you I am allowed to vote. Do not back down just because someone will try to disenfranchise you by simply telling you you don't even speak the language. How can you vote? Right? Don't be scared

Speaker 2  17:27  
that shouldn't stand in your way, because it's a very simple process. And if it

Speaker 1  17:31  
just, you know, literally, Google it and you'll show it to them here. Do you see what he writes here? Do you see how long I've been here? Make the mat.

Speaker 2  17:39  
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Make it happen. Go get my card. Of course,

Speaker 1  17:42  
most of you, you'll get the voting card in your mailbox. 90% of you, so that should be fine. But just in case that happens, keep in mind there is ways to go around it, or simply go vote early. Then you don't need the voting card. You just go to any library, any burger service, and you vote there. So this problem

Speaker 2  18:01  
looks ahead, so basically, almost the entire month of October up until the 18th of November on the

Speaker 1  18:07  
actual day. No, no, it's like a few days before you cannot vote anymore. Okay, there's a, like, a stopping day. I don't know

Speaker 2  18:13  
exactly, voting will close before the big election day.

Speaker 1  18:17  
I think Friday before Tuesday. That makes sense.

Speaker 2  18:20  
It stops. Yeah, great. So we know when, we know how, and we know what to do when you get in there to go and vote, and what to do if you have some some snags along the way, you know, candidates, name, party, letter, and then what you do on the voting day. We still have a lot of a lot of questions and maybe even some excuses why people don't want to vote. One that you sort of touched on is, the language. Some people have said, I don't speak the language. What am I supposed to do when I go there? You're saying it's literally it's not that hard. If you can cross out and if you can circle a name or put an X in a box, I'm sorry, if you could put an X in a box, maybe it's harder than I thought. But if you can put an X in a box, then you're good to go. The Danish test is something completely different. You know, you can take your Petit toe ped it tight. It doesn't really matter. All you have to do is put an X in a box, and you're, you're good to go

Speaker 1  19:08  
exactly, I mean, or just write a name in the box, yeah? And I think what's important is, some people forget they have two votes in that day. Yeah? You have the local elections, and then the state and then you have the regional elections. So what is the difference of those? Well, you know, in Denmark, we have 98 municipalities, so we're splitting 98 different local level governments. You can say which take care mainly of your day to day life, which is all from schools to roads to kindergartens, elder care, the Job Center. While on the regional level, it's about health care, okay, hospitals. It's about regional infrastructure is about tourists in Denmark. We used to have five regions. Now we have four, because she land and the Capital Region got united into East Denmark. So we have East Denmark, South Denmark, middle Denmark and North Denmark,

Speaker 2  19:55  
right, and born home is also with, with Denmark, East Denmark, right,

Speaker 1  19:59  
which is. Obviously. So you have these four regions, each of them has a president and a council, and they deal with the healthcare. So healthcare is not actually a national level, it's regional level. You're actually your yellow cards are being done by the Regional Government. Okay, that's why they look differently. If you come from different regions, yeah, Denmark is very local. It's very much about keeping the power as close to the citizen as possible. So that's why we have these two votes and are very important, local and regional. And think about it, most of your taxes actually stay where you live, like I think it's each municipality sets its own taxes. So some of you pay more, some of you pay less, depending where you live in the country, but it's more like 20% of your taxes, 2023 27 all of that stays there, and around 8% goes to the regional level to fund the healthcare system.

Speaker 2  20:53  
So some people who would say their excuse or their question would be like, why does this matter to me? I think you just explained it pretty well. Like, it's just pay for things you do every day, and the things you're already paying for are, are part of this and part of those decisions that are being

Speaker 1  21:06  
made. Yeah. And it's not about ideology. Even when we talk in local and regional we literally talk about two things, distribution of tax money, how are we going to use the money we all put together, and management of daily life. So it's not about ideology. We don't we're not talking about big laws and big rules here. We're literally talking about, should we have more, I don't know, integration programs. Should there be like, multilingual access to different services? That's what we're really talking about. We're talking about accessibility. We're talking about ease of access. We're talking about ease of use. We're talking about that kind of stuff, right? Should there be, like, a wheelchair ramp to the Citizen Service? Well, there's not. Let's do one. Yeah. Okay, now we need to fight to allocate some money for that to happen, right? So that's, that's, that's it, though, it's not some big politics. Every time I hear the word politics, people imagine some, some big things. No, we're literally talking about resource distribution, yeah,

Speaker 2  22:02  
and how to make where you live better, yeah. So how to manage it? That's

Speaker 1  22:07  
why people who run for for these elections are normal people. They're not politicians, I swear. I mean, if you meet local Danish politicians, they are not even close to what you will imagine a politician to be, because most

Speaker 2  22:19  
often this is not their full time gig. Is that correct? This is that correct? This is usually something they're doing on the side. It's maybe 15 hours, something like that. They're doing this in addition to their their full time job. Yeah, that's

Speaker 1  22:30  
true. If you are a mayor, is full time. Okay? So there is the mayor, then you have this alderman, which also is full time, which is like the director of, let's say department of the municipality political director. There's normal director which is hired, and then there is a political director who sets the political direction of the department that was decided by city council. And then there's city council people which are part time, sure. So literally, anyone that wishes to be part of a city council can run and become part of that's why, when you go there, you see people, what do you do in your everyday life? Well, I work for cleaning company, or I'm I'm a teacher, or I'm a researcher. I'm unemployed. There are some people who are unemployed and they still get elected. It's a slice of life,

Unknown Speaker  23:15  
so all backgrounds, all walks of life, exactly, yeah,

Speaker 1  23:18  
and that's why international should not be afraid of this. If you talk to them, they don't have any special political schools, political experience backgrounds, political science education. No. Those people go into national politics. They don't play in the Little League.

Speaker 2  23:33  
These are people on the ground that understand the issues that these are your neighbors. These are your colleagues. These are, this could be you exactly, especially, you know, if you're listening and you're listening and you're an international and you're curious, exactly so I'm guessing that one of the reasons that maybe there isn't as much international representation is, I would assume that the voting from internationals is a bit lower than than locals, because people didn't grow up with this. They don't know. Maybe they have a lot of questions, or they're just a little bit intimidated by it. One reason why people don't vote, they're intimidated. What are those numbers look like? As far as who's actually going out to vote, what does the

Speaker 1  24:07  
electorate look like? The highest percentage for voting in Denmark is for national elections, sure, which is 84% so that's that's high. Unfortunately, the local elections is 71 okay? Because it takes in consideration also us Sure. So while the percentage of this 84% is out of all citizens, the percentage of the voters is taken including us, the internationals, right, which we are now close to 15% of the population. So that means, obviously, that the voting percentage will be lower on the on the local and regional level. So we're pulling it down. Yeah, we're pulling it down, and then I'm happy about it. Yeah, all three rounds of elections before, big questions, big anger about it in the Danish media. Why in the hell is it so low? The percentage because it has dropped. The more internationals have come to Denmark, the more the percentage of voters for local region has continued to dip. Wow, go lower and lower, and it's going to be even lower this year, because we are even more this time. So unless we do something about it, unless we get internationals to go out and vote, we're going to again be discussed in a bad way that we don't care. We don't want to be part of society here. We don't value democracy, exactly. We don't value democracy. We don't have that as one of our core values, which is bullshit, yeah, but you know, we don't vote. So then how do we prove that?

Speaker 2  25:22  
And essentially, we are proving them right if we do stay home or we do think that this isn't

Speaker 1  25:26  
for us exactly. I mean, the average voting for internationals is 30% Wow. But it's only 30% because of non EU, because non EU actually has a much higher voting percentage. For example, the Somalian community has a voting percentage of 60% Wow. That's almost incredibly high. Yeah, neighbors, yeah, very good. Bravo, yeah. But then there's the Europeans, like, for example, my own kind, Romanians. Worst possible in elections, we got 11% Wow, polish. Even worse, 9% Why

Speaker 2  26:00  
do you think it is that the European Communities in that international group are voting at Lower, lower rates?

Speaker 1  26:08  
I feel like they don't feel the stress or the drama that none you have, because you guys go through a lot more hurdles. It's much more difficult for you to live here. So I guess that makes you more concerned. Europeans know they are protected by European law, which is not decided here. I feel they care less. Yeah, about it for them, you'll be like I was not voting back home. Why will I vote here? Sure, so they already come from backgrounds where voting is not really like so important. Like in Romania, the average voting is 25% or 30% Wow. Same in Poland, around 40% at best.

Speaker 2  26:44  
So if it's not something that they were super active in, or maybe it's

Speaker 1  26:48  
reserve voted in life, wow. So, so they don't have this democratic culture to begin with, even though they come from democratic countries, which is quite funny. So there's people not coming from democratic countries that they're more excited to vote than the ones coming from, technically, democracies, which is quite funny, absolutely.

Speaker 2  27:06  
Yeah, you know, especially being here in Denmark, where voting and democracy is such a big part of the ethos, the culture, the you know, think Danes are very proud of democracy, and making sure that we're a part of that is probably a point of pride for many people, but for others, they may look at this and say, You're not voting. Why should you keep being able to

Speaker 1  27:25  
I'm happy that non Europeans show up and vote. They could do better. Because, yes, while the Somalians, for example, have a high percentage, Americans don't, right, you guys are barely at 30% British are at 25 at best. You know, the more Western, non Europeans, they really don't really care. Again, they made me take it for granted coming from democracies. If you come from democracies, just expect a low voting percentage. If you don't come from democracies, expect a higher voting percentage. That's just how you should look at it interesting. It's quite funny, yeah, yeah, sad, I guess, at the same time, yeah, I don't know how to explain it. I mean, I'm not, I cannot understand the philosophy behind why is that happening? That's statistics.

Speaker 2  28:08  
And I wonder sometimes if that maybe has to do with feeling like there is a sense of everything here works. I don't want to disturb it. I don't want to disturb it. I don't know enough, so I don't want to somehow screw it up, and I'm just going to maybe, I think there is a sense of the idea that me staying home and not voting is almost a vote for the status quo, because everything works in the system. How does that change? You know, because I've talked to some people that are from the US or the UK, I didn't ask them specifically, hey, why don't you vote? But that's sort of the air that I get. That's sort of the essence of the conversation. Was everything works, you know, I'm not really that into the politics. I don't know enough about the party, so I'm just gonna, I'll let the the Danes decide, in a way,

Speaker 1  28:54  
yeah, but that's dangerous, because the Danes are unhappy with this, yeah? So they're trying to, kind of, they feel like they're making a favor to students by not getting involved. Yeah, but actually what they are doing they're angering them because they are eroding democracy, and democracy is one of the reasons why Denmark is at the top of Democracy Index, transparency index, low corruption index, Happiness Index, whatever index is out there in the world, it's thanks to the fact that they have cultivated democracy for more than 100 years. For God's sake, we even have a day dedicated for democracy on fifth of June where we gather in parks and we talk about why democracy is so cool and so great. We even have elections for the nine great people like like a mock up elections for 15 year olds in old schools where young parties are competing against each other, and then the Prime Minister announces the result at the end of the day, live on national media. Democracy is actively cultivated in Danish society. So when you have such a significant part of society who says, well, we don't care enough, you decide that's not a sign of, hey, I'm making you a favor for by not getting involved. They use a sign like you don't care. You are not Danish. Literally, I keep seeing people. Oh, but now I'm Danish. Are you really okay? Let's start Did you vote? No, are you using your free time in benefit of society? No, no, you're not Danish, but I speak Danish. Congratulations. You're good at languages, very good