News item | 14-06-2022 | 14:10
The bill for the New procedure for determining election results was approved by the Senate today. The main purpose of this bill is to create possibilities for detecting possible (counting) errors in a timely manner before the result of an election and to correct them in a transparent and verifiable manner. The new law will enter into force on 1 January 2023 and will therefore apply to the combined provincial and water board elections in March of that year.
Minister Bruins Slot of the Interior and Kingdom Relations: “This bill provides an important improvement in the procedure for determining the results of elections. There will be more opportunity to correct any (counting) errors, and the counting process will become more controllable.”
Municipal polling station
In the near future, a municipal polling station (GSB) will be set up in each municipality for each election to determine the election results at municipal level. Municipalities can choose from 2 ways of counting the votes. The counting of votes is always public. The first way is for the polling stations to carry out a complete count on the night of the vote. The following day, the GSB will publicly and centrally check the official reports of all polling stations, and will count the votes again if the polling station has made mistakes or if there are unexplained counting discrepancies. The second way is that the polling stations only count how many votes there are on the night of the vote side have been released. The votes on the candidates are not counted yet. This is done the next day, by the GSB, in public and at a central location with a new team of counters. This is also known as ‘central counting’.
After the GSB has determined the result at municipal level, all official reports are published on the municipal website. In this way, interested parties can check how votes were cast in ‘their’ polling station. If they discover errors in one or more official reports, they can report them to the central electoral committee. The central electoral committee, which is also given a number of control tasks, can instruct the GSB to correct any errors. After this has happened, the CSB determines the result of the election. Municipalities will receive more than 3 million euros extra annually for the implementation of this bill.
Election candidates no longer members of polling station
This law also provides that candidates who participate in an election can no longer be a member of a polling station for that same election. This prevents (the appearance of) a conflict of personal interests. Incumbent members of the body for which the election is held can no longer be members of a polling station. This prevents them from having to pass judgment on the conduct and validity of an election in which they themselves were involved.
In addition, the period between the day of the vote and the first meeting of the newly elected members of the body for which the election was held is extended from 8 to 14 days. This extension is necessary to give everyone who has a role in the process of determining the result the opportunity to properly fulfill his or her duties.