I became a Dutch citizen earlier this year. That is, I became a Dutch citizen given the definition of ‘citizen’ that most political scientists would use – someone with full political rights, including the right to vote and the right to stand for election. The process was partly Kafkaesque – perhaps I’ll tell you some more about that another time.

The reason I wanted Dutch citizenship is that I want to be able to vote in the country in which I live, in which I plan to stay, in which my children grow up, in which I work, in which I pay taxes, and – perhaps the most important – where I care a lot about how institutions are being redesigned and policies implemented. The reason I didn’t apply for Dutch citizenship earlier on, is that it has only recently become possible for me to acquire Dutch citizenship without losing my Belgian citizenship. And I didn’t want to give up Belgian citizenship, since at the ‘personal identity’ level it feels like a denial of part of oneself if one has to give up the nationality that has shaped the person one has become. I think people should be able to hold two passports since one’s nationality does not only reflect which political community one regards oneself most engaged with, but also one’s identity at a deeper level – whatever one prefers to call this – the psychological level or related to one’s personal self-narrative, or something similar.

But now I am in this remarkable position to be a person with two votes. I can vote for the national and regional elections in Belgium, and for local, national and European elections in the Netherlands. Isn’t this a violation of the deep democratic principle we all know by the slogan ‘one man, one vote’? Some friends have suggested that there is nothing wrong with having two votes, since after all one has ties with both countries. But that doesn’t seem quite right to me, since it would still mean that one person overall has greater political power than their co-citizens.

So I guess my position is this: Two passports: fine. Two votes: not OK. We should have a set of rules such that those of us who hold two passports should prioritise them: the first one gives one all the rights of all other citizens, and the second one gives one all the rights of the citizens except the right to vote.