A counting difference of less than twenty votes at the Tilburg polling station Parochiezaal de Goede Herder caused the House of Representatives to decide in a short meeting on Saturday morning to conduct a recount of all votes cast at four Tilburg polling stations. Be at the three other agencies counting differences were also notedalthough possible NRC It is no longer possible to find out how big these voting differences are. The municipality of Tilburg has now removed all voting information from its website.
The recount will have no influence on the overall election results of November 22, in which the PVV emerged as the big winner. However, the “inexplicable counting difference” at De Goede Herder has to do with the PVV, which suddenly received 19 fewer votes during the second count.
Elections depend on confidence in the voting process and its final outcome, says the Electoral Council. After the presidential elections in the United States (2020) and Brazil (2022), in which Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump refused to accept Joe Biden’s win and former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro cast doubt on the outcome after he lost the elections had lost, the Electoral Council found it necessary to provide additional openness about the Dutch voting procedure.
In 2022, the House of Representatives and Senate the Electoral Act was amended, through the New Procedure for Determining Election Results Act, in the hope of maintaining unquestionable confidence in the electoral process. Since the change in the law, it has become possible to return a result and re-count even in case of minor counting errors. This was different in the old situation: there had to be a concrete suspicion that the observed error would influence the final distribution of seats.
Since the change in the law, two counting procedures apply in municipalities. Each regular polling station first only counts how many votes parties have received. The next day, a separate municipal polling station – appointed by the Mayor and Aldermen – counts all votes for the parties and the individual candidates voted for.
When differences come to light, a new count must be carried out. This is the case, for example, if the number of admitted voters and the number of ballots counted do not correspond.
Fewer votes for PVV
The report from polling station 21 in Tilburg (Parochiezaal De Goede Herder) shows that 297 votes were counted for the PVV on Wednesday evening, November 22. On Thursday, the Tilburg municipal polling station published a list showing that the PVV was allocated 278 votes from this office. This difference is not noticed anywhere in Tilburg. It is not yet clear why.
The “inexplicable counting difference”, VVD MP Ulysse Ellian wrote on Friday in a letter was discovered by the parliamentary committee that Ellian chairs: the Commission for the Verification of Credentials, which checks the official reports from throughout the country. The Electoral Council, known as a central polling station, has also registered this inexplicable counting difference. But it did not follow up, as evidenced by the fact that the Electoral Council declared the final election results on Friday.
Ellian states that the inexplicable differences exceed the permitted margin of error of 2 percent, making a recount at Tilburg level appropriate. On Friday evening he wrote on X that there will be “no overall count of the House of Representatives elections.”
NSC leader Pieter Omtzigt received support in the House of Representatives on Saturday morning for his request for an external investigation into what went wrong. He wants to know why there is no “light” in Tilburg [is] come on.” As far as he is concerned, an investigation should also be conducted into “the Electoral Council’s software”. Apparently it did not send a signal, even though the margin of error was exceeded. “The proposal is to do this after the elections, and certainly not before the results are determined,” he says in response to questions from this newspaper.
Ulysse Ellian’s parliamentary committee will be present at the recounts in Tilburg on Saturday or Sunday.