Wednesday 29 October is designated as the date for the parliamentary elections. In the municipality of Tynaarlo, the voters no longer have to fold book work to cast their vote, because voters will soon be using a small ballot in A3 format.
Tynaarlo was one of the municipalities that participated in this experiment in the European elections last year. And the city council was excellent, because at the beginning of May it was unanimously decided to continue the experiment in the next elections. So that turns out to be the parliamentary elections on October 29.
The experiment with the smaller ballot (A3 format) is not yet further expanded, so only in Alphen aan den Rijn, Boekel, Borne, Midden-Delfland and Tynaarlo are used with the small ticket. To expand the pilot, more preparation time would be needed.
“The reason to switch to the new format ballot papers was because it was incredibly large notes and there was a lot of criticism,” said Mayor Thijsen during the council meeting on 15 April. “The new note went extremely well last year, both among the voters and with the counters. I expect that the large note will no longer be used in five years.”
On the new ballot you no longer have to visit the full selection lists, but you check two boxes: one for the political party that you vote and a second one for the song on which the politician of preference is on the racing list. In the voting booth, the full electoral list is hung, so that the voter can quickly recognize where the politician is.
Yet there were more false votes in the European elections than usual. “The mistakes are mainly because the list of candidates is being given on songs that do not include a candidate.” For example, if a political party has nominated only twenty politicians and you check a number 21 in the second option, then the voice is invalid.
In addition, the polling stations regularly had to replace the election list with candidates in the voting booth, because voters filled in red dots on this, which, according to Thijsen, can be seen as influence. “But by improving information, we expect to get fewer error messages.” Moreover, the mayor looks at whether it is an option to hang the electoral list behind glass, a suggestion by Eline Schievink from GroenLinks.