RTL Today - Municipal elections: Your guide to registering to vote ahead of Monday's deadline

Every resident is eligible to vote in the upcoming local elections, let's walk through how easy it is to register!

"If you don't vote, then you don't get to complain." This is a motto I had while growing up in the United States, a country where voting is a voluntary action. While here in Luxembourg all citizens must vote, my motto still rings true for those of us residents who have yet to register to vote this coming June.

Wait, foreigners can vote in Luxembourg?

The simple answer is yes. In theory, every resident in Luxembourg has the right to vote in local elections, after the law requiring foreigners to have lived in the country for five years in order to vote was abolished. So while we foreign-residents can't yet make our voice heard at the national level, we've got to start somewhere.

Despite my motto, I've been ignoring appeals from friends and family as well as the occasional public campaign to register to vote. Why? I don't have a legitimate reason other than sometimes administrative procedures can feel daunting and over complicated.

While this is true, I can now speak from personal and first-hand experience that registering to vote in the upcoming June 11 municipal elections was simple and took less than five minutes. In fact, reading this article might take longer than the entire process!

Let's walk through the application process together, because as cheesy as it may sound, your vote actually does matter.

The registration deadline is set for 5pm on 17 April, so there is, quite literally, no time like the present to register to vote!

Getting started

So, we've decided we are going to register to vote (go us!). In order to start the process we first must head over to icanvote.lu. The URL will redirect to jepeuxvoter.lu/en/, but don't worry. Once you've made it to the site, you can select your preferred language whether it be English, French, German, Portuguese or Luxembourgish.

Once you've selected your preferred language (I chose English), you next need to decide if you would like to continue registering online or if you would like to register in-person at your local commune. This article covers the steps to register online, but if you prefer the personal touch of a municipal employee, simply click the "in my municipality" button in the upper-right region of the page.

Here you will be given the necessary information including documents that you must present at the commune to be added to the voter registry. To continue with an online voter registration, you guessed it, click the button labeled "online."

This action will redirect you to guichet.lu where you will need to scroll to the bottom of the page to access the online application form or "formulaire." You may find that the guichet.lu page is in another language, but that's not important right now. Select your preferred application language in the application box and then click the red button labeled "go to procedure" to begin online registration.

What's the procedure?

Before we can access the application form, we need to authenticate ourselves. I would argue this is the part of the process that took me the longest. If you've ever done anything on myguichet.lu, you already know the drill. There are three methods to choose from: Luxtrust, GouvID or eIDAS.

Once you've successfully identified yourself as yourself, you will see a pre-filled application form containing the most up-to-date information stored under your name within the National Registry. To move onto the next part of the application, you'll need to verify that the information is correct and up-to-date.

Additionally, you will be asked if you have lived abroad. If the answer is yes, a blank section will appear where you will need to insert your latest known address for your country of origin.

So far so good right? I told you this wasn't that hard!

Registrations

Now it's time to select which elections you want to register to vote in.

But Iris, I thought I was only eligible to vote in municipal elections, why is the application asking me to choose which elections to register for?

Ok, so depending on your nationality or nationalities, you may be eligible to vote in European elections in addition to municipal ones. This is the case for myself and will thus be reflected in the application process that we are completing together.

But also, let's be real here: having to fill out yet another application for European elections would just be annoying, so let's stop complaining and just knock both of these out in one go.

Now it gets personal. You'll have to answer two "yes or no" questions based on your personal situation as well as make three declarations (via a ticked box).

Remember that this is an administrative procedure so do yourself a favour and actually read each statement before you tick the box. I know this take a a little more time, but it is what it is.

Once that's done, we basically just rinse and repeat for the communal election registration part. Answer the questions regarding your personal situation and read the declarations before agreeing to them.

We're so close now, can you also feel the civic duty building up inside you?

The next step is one we all crave; validation. Make sure to double or triple check if need be that all of the information on the application is in fact correct.

After the validation has been confirmed, the system will generate a PDF document of the voter registration application. Nifty! The web page has changed but fret not, this is what's supposed to happen.

This very official and important document now needs to be signed virtually. The term used in this context is "e sign."This is a two-step process which I did not take a photo of as I would have had to blur out almost everything in order to keep my information safe...you understand.

But, just like with every other step of registering to vote, it was simple and straight forward.

As I mentioned, the virtual signing is a two-step process and must be completed with a signing device. You can choose between Luxtrust or GouvID. Once you've followed the prompted steps based on your signing device, you will be redirected to a page that looks something like this:

Check out the cute little file icon!

All that is left to do now is to click the blue button labeled "send." This will send your signed and expertly prepared application to the appropriate administrative authorities at your commune of residency. If for whatever reason your application is refused, you will be informed via post.

You can even download your application off the same page if you like to have paper versions of things. Additionally, you will receive an email from guichet.lu confirming that your application has been sent.

And that's it! We're done!