Morocco turns to mass outreach to register young voters before 2026 polls

Morocco’s Interior Ministry says it is preparing an exceptional revision of the electoral roll designed to bring in young citizens who have stayed outside formal politics, promising a nationwide communication campaign and a short, legally defined registration window that officials hope will reach first time voters before the next parliamentary election.

Interior minister Abdelouafi Laftit told the Council of Councillors on Tuesday that the operation’s purpose is to update the national electorate by creating the conditions to register as many people as possible who are not currently listed, “especially young people.”

He said the process will run on a timetable set by a ministerial decision published in the Official Gazette, and will include dates for filing applications either in person at administrative offices or online through the electoral lists website, within a period the law sets at 30 days.

Laftit said the ministry will back the revision with an intensive, expanded information and communication campaign meant to push unregistered citizens, with youth at the centre, toward the registration channels as soon as the window opens.

The High commission for planning, using electoral lists finalised on 31 July 2021, found that registration rises steeply with age, from 33.6 percent among 18 to 24 year olds to 94.4 percent among those aged 60 and above.
In the same analysis, the HCP put the total number of registered voters at 17.509 million, around 69.4 percent of the voting age population at that time.

Those numbers help explain why official turnout figures can feel disconnected from everyday political mood. In the 2021 elections, the Interior Ministry said turnout reached 50.18 percent of registered voters by the close of polling.

But the under registration among the youngest cohort means millions of eligible people never enter the denominator.
That gap sits within a broader deficit of confidence in the institutions that elections produce. The Arab Barometer survey carried out in late 2023 and early 2024 found trust in the Moroccan government at 33 percent and trust in parliament at 38 percent, with respondents placing corruption, public services and the economy among the country’s biggest challenges.

The same findings note that people wanting to emigrate are more likely to be men under 30 with a college degree, a reminder that frustration can translate into exit as much as voice.
Political parties have tried to respond to that distance by turning registration into a symbolic first step. In December 2025, the youth wing of the Justice and Development Party issued a public appeal urging young Moroccans to register during the annual revision period, describing youth voting power as a way to rebalance the political field.
The call was part of a wider end of year push by party structures across the spectrum, but it also reflected a reality parties rarely say aloud, that large numbers of young people do not see a direct line between party competition and the lived problems that dominate their lives.
The state’s answer has been to focus on access and the cost of entering politics as much as civic duty. In November 2025, Laftit presented electoral reform bills to parliament and said the proposals were designed to strengthen women’s and youth representation, defining youth as those aged 35 and under, including unaffiliated candidates.
He outlined public financial incentives for youth candidacies and changes meant to lower procedural barriers, including simplifying requirements for lists presented by candidates without party affiliation.