Unequal Democracies: Lithuania

Only about a half of Lithuanians vote in national elections. Lithuania has one of the lowest voter turnout rates in Europe and the lowest one in the Baltic states. This report aims to identify who the Lithuanian (non-)voters are and suggest potential solutions to improve the current situation.

In line with general European trends, the Lithuanians who are younger, less educated, and come from a lower socioeconomic class are less likely to vote. Non-voters in Lithuania are usually uninterested in politics, but voter turnout trends are not connected to voters’ satisfaction with democracy.

Systemic non-voting requires the attention of policy makers. We propose several reform tracks for tackling low voter turnout in Lithuania: introducing online voting, opening-up of political parties to the public, lowering the voting age to 16, and considering measures of deliberative democracy.