EMBs can assess their organizational capacity to enhance youth participation and reflect on their goals and values, governance, human resources policies, and general planning. 

A first prerequisite to foster inclusion of youth in electoral processes is ensuring that young people are positioned at all levels within the structure of EMBs. Although EMBs often deploy many young people as voting staff at the time of an election, especially if they require tech-savvy staff, youth remain underrepresented at the higher level because they often do not have the experience required for these positions. Research^[i] in the European Union found no instances of the regulated participation of young people, representatives of youth organizations, or experts on youth issues within the advisory boards of EMBs. The 2015 report, “Young People and Democratic Life in Europe,”, highlighted explicitly the lack of strategies to get more young people on EMB boards.^[ii] 

The lack of inclusion of young people across EMB structures is unfortunate because employing more young people can have many advantages. For example: 

• EMBs can profit from in-house knowledge and experience from youth to understand youth challenges and develop successful strategies to engage youth in electoral processes.
• Young people are — in general — more familiar with new communication tools and as such can contribute to the development and implementation of comprehensive online voter education campaigns.