European elections in understandable language

By: Marina de Horn, editor-in-chief products and services catalog Felix

european flag

The European elections are coming up again. And we are all busy with that from our work. It is quite a challenge: getting all the rooms in order, ordering all the papers and distributing them to all the locations, and calling on the residents to help man all the polling stations.

We also have to inform residents that there will be elections on June 6. A Facebook post from a Gouda resident (I live in Gouda): "Nice. May as deputy chairman June 6 welcome residents of #korteAkkeren in the Westerkerk to cast their vote," generated quite a few questions in the comments: 

  • "What do we get to vote for?" 
  • "Is this about parking policy in the district?" 
  • "Then what's on June 6?" 

Apparently these European elections are not yet very much alive, because even asking around in my surroundings, did not yield many good answers. Work to do, including adjusting the texts on the website. 

Election Newspaper

The Prodemos Foundation has written an election newspaper in plain language, in collaboration with the Reading & Writing Foundation and the ABC Foundation. Highly recommended! Available in many libraries and also interesting for yourself. It explains well exactly what the European elections mean. And the entire voting procedure is described in understandable language. In short: request it (via the link above). Also useful to get inspiration for your own (web) text. And you can make room for the other 19 copies in the public area.

Free check and tips

Send your (web) text about the European elections (maximum 3 A4 sheets, with a font size of at least 10 point) to marina.dehorn@shift2.nl. 

Then I'll put your text through our 'car wash' and you'll get your text back. You will then know the score at B1 level (according to our tool WizeNote) and I'm going to give you 3 insights and/or tips so you can immediately make your next text clearer. 

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