Gen Z: the generation holding the phone, will it hold the election?

It is ten o'clock at night, somewhere between Delmas and Carrefour. The power has just gone out, but the screen stays lit. In the palm of a nineteen-year-old's hand, the world scrolls by: a konpa video, a voice note from an aunt in Miami. And, tucked between two stories, a phrase that keeps coming back these days: "Nou pap vote vòlè ankò." (We will not vote for thieves again.) She hesitates, thumb in midair. Share it, or not?

Imagine that gesture repeated hundreds of thousands of times, every night, across the country. You may be holding one of the keys to the 2027 elections.

A generation that has hardly ever voted

Haiti is a young country, so young we forget it: about half the population is under 25, according to the United Nations. Generation Z, those born between 1997 and 2012, grew up between the shaking of the earth and the shaking of politics, between departures abroad and days when no one could leave the house. The last presidential election was held in 2016, when many of them were still in school. In 2027, they will drop a ballot into the box for the first time.

This article will not tell them who to vote for. It asks another, more dizzying question: how much weight do they really carry?

The weight of numbers

The answer is written in black and white in the CEP's own dashboards. On November 5, 2026, the new voter register counted 914,676 registered voters. Among them, 164,200 young people aged 18 to 28: nearly one voter in five. Add the 29 to 38-year-olds, and people under 39 make up 40% of the register.

And the door is still open: registration runs until May 20, 2027.

To grasp what these numbers are worth, remember 2016. That year, out of about 6.2 million registered voters, fewer than one in five voted: 18%, barely 1.1 million people. The president was elected with some 590,000 votes. Do the math: the under-39s already registered today, 368,723 of them, add up to more than half of that total. In a country where so few people vote, a generation that shows up one July morning can prove every forecast wrong.

Too young to run?

On the campaign posters, though, their faces are rare. The CEP's preliminary list counted 8,885 candidates on November 5, 2026. Only 690 were between 18 and 30: 7.8%. They are one voter in five, but fewer than one candidate in twelve.

The law explains part of the gap: you must be 35 to run for president, 30 for the Senate and 25 for the Chamber of Deputies. But where the door is open, in town halls and above all in communal sections, young people are already stepping forward: for ASEC, nearly one candidate in seven is under 31. It is from the ground up, closest to the neighborhoods, that a generation often first enters public life.

Power in the palm of a hand

Back to that screen glowing in the dark. Haiti had about 4.7 million internet users and 2.95 million active social media profiles in October 2025, according to DataReportal. In that digital crowd, Generation Z is at home. WhatsApp, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram: it knows the codes, the rhythms, the traps.

That know-how has already proved itself. In August 2018, a single photo posted on Twitter, a blindfolded man holding a piece of cardboard reading "Kot kòb Petwo Karibe a?" ("Where is the PetroCaribe money?"), launched the #PetroCaribeChallenge. Within days, thousands of young people were asking the same question across every network, before carrying it to the doors of the Superior Court of Auditors, then into the streets. The question became impossible to ignore: in 2019, the Court published its audit reports on how PetroCaribe funds had been used, read and debated across the country. A generation armed with phones had put accountability at the heart of the national conversation.

Today, a different rallying cry is passing from phone to phone, the one scrolling across the screen of the girl from Delmas: "Nou pap vote vòlè ankò". A short phrase, easy to share, that voices a deep weariness. But a slogan only weighs as much as what stands behind it: facts, documents, precise questions. That is where public data changes everything.

In 2027, that power can be used again, and this time before the vote. The electoral decree requires every candidate who has managed public funds to provide a discharge certificate and a declaration of assets. Who has already held power? What did they do with it? Did they account for it? Asked in public, shared, passed from neighborhood to neighborhood, those questions can weigh more than any campaign poster. Demanding accountability from everyone who has governed, whatever their camp: that may be the most useful campaign a generation can run.

When children teach their parents

We assume politics flows downward, from parents to children. That is only half the story. In the United States, researchers Michael McDevitt and Steven Chaffee found in 2002 that when teenagers studied and discussed elections at school, it was their parents who began seeking out information and taking part more. They called it "trickle-up" influence.

In Haiti, this scene already plays out every day. It is the son who sets up his mother's phone, the granddaughter who reads her grandfather's voice notes aloud, the niece who fills out an online form for the whole family. That quiet role can become a civic one:

1. check that parents and grandparents are registered and, if not, take them to a registration center with their ID card;
2. show them the electoral calendar and the dates that matter to them;
3. look up together the candidates for their town and communal section;
4. defuse the fake news before it makes the rounds of the family.

The point is not to dictate a vote, but to give the people you love the freedom to vote with their eyes open.

An open-air mine of information

Earlier generations often voted blind, guided by posters and word of mouth. This one has an unprecedented wealth at hand: never before has so much election information been public in Haiti.

• The CEP website (cephaiti.ht): notices, the electoral decree, the amended Constitution, the calendar.
• The CEP candidate dashboard: number of candidates by office, their age, sex and department.
• The CEP voter registration dashboard: registered voters by age, sex and department.
• On Vwapèp, all of this is gathered and updated several times a day: registered voters, candidates, the calendar and your ballot, which shows every candidate in your area, from president down to ASEC.
• The Vwapèp assistant answers your questions in Kreyòl, French or English, based on CEP documents: ask it a question.

The countdown

• November 15, 2026: online registration closes for presidential, Senate and Chamber of Deputies candidates.
• November 30, 2026: registration closes for mayor, CASEC and ASEC candidates.
• May 20, 2027: the voter register closes. After that, it will be too late to register.
• April 15 to July 17, 2027: election campaign.
• July 18, 2027: first round.
• October 4, 2027: runoff and local elections.

And the girl from Delmas?

That night, let us imagine she shared the slogan, and did not stop there. That she opened the list of candidates in her town, looked up who had already governed, then sent it all to her cousin, her neighbor, her mother. A tiny gesture. But it is from tiny gestures, repeated by an entire generation, that great turning points are sometimes born.

Generation Z does not need to be given a voice: it already has one, at its fingertips. 2027 will show what it does with it.

Vwapèp is an independent citizen initiative with no ties to the CEP, any party or any candidate. Candidate figures come from the CEP's preliminary list, which has not yet been validated. Vwapèp polls reflect the views of their participants and are not representative of the electorate.

Sources: CEP voter registration and candidate dashboards (November 5, 2026); CEP updated electoral calendar of October 28, 2026; amended Constitution, articles 91 and 96; decree of October 6, 2026 revising the electoral decree, article 153; Superior Court of Auditors and Administrative Disputes (CSC/CA), PetroCaribe fund audit reports (January 31 and May 31, 2019); DataReportal, Digital 2026: Haiti; results of the November 20, 2016 presidential election (18.11% turnout); United Nations, World Population Prospects 2024; M. McDevitt and S. Chaffee, "From top-down to trickle-up influence", Political Communication, 2002.