News item | 13-11-2023 | 10:33
Minister de Jonge of the Interior and Kingdom Relations, Housing and Spatial Planning calls on municipalities to make the House of Representatives election on November 22 and the European Parliament election of June 2024 as accessible as possible for everyone.
For more than 2 million Dutch people, voting does not come naturally. This is, for example, due to a physical or (mild) intellectual disability. But there are also people who have difficulty reading. Many municipalities are already working on accessibility, such as by making a voting template available for voters with a visual impairment or by providing a (remote) interpreter for voters with a hearing impairment. However, after the provincial council and water board elections in March, it became clear that improvements are still possible. The Netherlands Institute for Human Rights has also drawn attention to this in a letter.
Minister de Jonge: “The House of Representatives election will take place on November 22. This is the moment when voters can cast their votes and determine the course of the Netherlands together. As Minister of the Interior, I think it is important that everyone can vote and that every voter can do so as independently as possible. Municipalities are committed to the accessibility of the elections. Aids are available in each polling station, such as a magnifying glass, an enlarged list of candidates and a voting booth with a lowered writing surface. Unfortunately, municipalities are not always successful in making all polling stations accessible. Together with municipalities, I want to ensure that the elections become even more accessible.”
The evaluation of the past provincial council and water board elections showed that almost 80% of the polling stations were insufficiently accessible. More than half involved bottlenecks at the entrance, such as thresholds, heavy, narrow or closed doors. It also turned out that in many cases self-installed ramps were not safe enough. Municipalities can still work on some of these accessibility bottlenecks in the short term before the House of Representatives election on November 22. This involves, for example, opening heavy doors of polling stations as standard and paying attention to the safe installation of ramps. As a polling station member, it is also important to be alert and to monitor whether voters can find their way to and from the polling station without obstacles.
It is also important towards the European Parliament election of June 6, 2024 that we, together with everyone who has a role in the election process, take steps to make the elections more accessible. The Minister of the Interior and Kingdom Relations also calls on political parties to start working on accessible election manifestos. The minister also expects to submit a proposal for an experimental law to the House of Representatives this year that will make it possible for all voters who request it to receive help at the voting booth. In that case, this assistance is provided by a polling station member who has been specially trained for this purpose.
Experiments on smaller ballot paper in European Parliament election
The government also wants to experiment with a new model of ballot paper to see how elections can be made even more accessible. It appears that older voters, voters who are visually impaired or blind, find the current ballot paper too large and the letters too small. During the European Parliament election in June next year, four small municipalities will experiment with the use of this smaller ballot paper. It will then be examined whether these experiments can be scaled up to more municipalities.