{"id":60659,"date":"2023-10-02T21:04:14","date_gmt":"2023-10-02T21:04:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/teknomers.com\/en\/the-church-spent-nok-70-million-on-the-2023-church-election-9-percent-voted-news-vestland\/"},"modified":"2023-10-02T21:04:16","modified_gmt":"2023-10-02T21:04:16","slug":"the-church-spent-nok-70-million-on-the-2023-church-election-9-percent-voted-news-vestland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/teknomers.com\/en\/the-church-spent-nok-70-million-on-the-2023-church-election-9-percent-voted-news-vestland\/","title":{"rendered":"The church spent NOK 70 million on the 2023 church election – 9 percent voted – news Vestland"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In 2008, the church and the state parted ways. Church elections became more important, because the state was no longer supposed to decide matters. They therefore introduced a democratic reform, which should make it easier to vote at the church election. Now, 15 years later, the Church sees the lowest voter turnout since this reform. The percentage was 9.07 per cent. It creates reactions in the Christian community. – When voter turnout drops as much as it does now, it’s a warning that you have to think through the system again, in order to get more people to participate, says Knut Lundby. LEGITIMACY: Professor Knut Lundby questions how well the election is rooted among the members of the Church of Norway. Photo: University of Oslo He is professor emeritus in media studies and a former member of the Kyrkjem\u00f8det, the highest body in the Church. In a comment in V\u00e5rt Land this weekend, he questioned whether the election still has legitimacy. – That the turnout is so low raises questions about how valid this election is, he says to news. In 2009, there are no aggregate figures for the entire church election. news has therefore used the speech for the parish council election. The total will therefore be higher. Spent 70 million – will make changes The low voter turnout is happening at the same time as it has never been easier to vote. The church spent NOK 70 million on the election this year. Leader of the Church Council, Kristin Gunleiksrud Rauum, is not satisfied with the turnout. – We had higher ambitions. We hoped the turnout would increase, it didn’t, she says. NOT SATISFIED: Church council leader Kristin Gunnleiksrud Raaum is not satisfied with the turnout. Photo: Den Norske Kyrkja \/ CF-WESENBERG One of the measures to make the election more accessible was to make it possible to vote digitally, which resulted in a record number of advance votes. This cost just over NOK 8 million to develop. Rauum believes that spending NOK 70 million on the election is too much. About half of the money went to maintaining the dam locally. – I think that it is not sustainable over time. We have invested a lot in developing democracy, so you also have to spend money on it. But we don’t just spend kroner and \u00f8re on it, but personnel resources on the election in a way that we have to do something about, and we will do that, she says. ONLY ONE CAME: On the national advance voting day, only one person came to the church office in F\u00f8rde to vote. Kyrkjeverje Sissel Vartdal thinks there could be several reasons, but mentions the digital advance voting and the low turnout overall as two possible reasons. Wants a major change to the entire election The digital voting is something Lundby thinks was a good solution. 34 percent of all votes were digital advance votes. – It was a success, and can be developed further to get more people to participate, he says. On the other hand, he sees problems with other parts of the election on which the church spent a lot of money. For example, the cost of arranging physical advance voting locally. In F\u00f8rde, there was only one person who voted when the Church Administrator in Sunnfjord, Sissel Vartdal, sat ready on the church grounds in F\u00f8rde on the church’s national advance voting day. – I was a little surprised. I thought that if there is a day to go and vote, it is today, says Vartdal. She believes that they have reached out to the people, and that the digital voting is proof of this. At the same time, she believes that there must be changes. – I think you have to look at the electoral system. The church meeting must not only adjust the arrangement, but take greater action, she says.
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In 2008, the church and the state parted ways. Church elections became more important, because the state was no longer supposed to decide matters. They therefore introduced a democratic reform, which should make it easier to vote at the church election. Now, 15 years later, the Church sees the lowest voter turnout since this reform. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":60660,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1876,2714,679,16,1490,1317,1972,40,2364],"class_list":["post-60659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-church","tag-election","tag-million","tag-news","tag-nok","tag-percent","tag-spent","tag-vestland","tag-voted"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/teknomers.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/teknomers.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/teknomers.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teknomers.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teknomers.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/teknomers.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60659\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teknomers.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/teknomers.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teknomers.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teknomers.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}