News item | 26-09-2023 | 08:06
Thanks to the great efforts of municipalities and the many volunteers, the provincial council and water board elections of March 15 went well. There were few to no incidents on election day and turnout was higher than previous elections at 58.8 and 53.6% respectively. This is what Minister of the Interior and Kingdom Relations, Housing and Spatial Planning Hugo de Jonge writes in the evaluation he presents to the House of Representatives. However, these elections have put a lot of pressure on municipalities. With the early House of Representatives elections on November 22 approaching, various measures have been taken to reduce the pressure on municipalities and volunteers and to ensure that the election process runs as smoothly as possible.
Hugo de Jonge: ‘Organizing an election is a huge job for municipalities. We also saw this in the past elections. Many municipal officials and volunteers have worked, often well into the night. I am very grateful to everyone for their efforts. Without them it is not possible to organize elections. With the House of Representatives elections around the corner, municipalities are once again faced with an important and extensive task. I hope that many people will register with the municipality of their choice to help. Elections are the basis of a strong democracy. That is why it is important that every vote counts.’
Feasibility of the election process
Discussions with municipalities during and after the elections revealed that these elections were more difficult to implement than previous elections, due to, among other things, the double election, the large ballot papers and a higher turnout than expected. The new rules regarding the counting and determining the results also had an additional impact: in many municipalities the counting continued well into the night.
House of Representatives election
The municipalities are now busy preparing for the House of Representatives elections in November. At the moment, the impression is that this is going well and there are no signals that there are problems with the organization of the election. The Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations, together with the Electoral Council, the Association of Dutch Municipalities (VNG), and the Dutch Association for Civil Affairs (NVVB), have examined what options there are to support municipalities in the upcoming election. For example, the instructions clarify how to deal with unexplained differences in the count. After counting all votes once on Wednesday evening, polling stations can stop counting. In the event of any counting discrepancies, the votes from that polling station will be counted again the next day. These instructions should prevent polling stations from continuing to count late into the night. The Electoral Council is also busy facilitating processes to support municipalities, for example in the use of the supporting software that municipalities use for counting votes (OSV2020). In addition, the BZK supports municipalities with a recruitment campaign to find sufficient polling station members.
Election agenda 2030
During the evaluation of the 2021 House of Representatives election, the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations, together with the Electoral Council, the VNG and the NVVB, drew up the 2030 Election Agenda. This agenda contains proposals for measures to further improve the robustness, accessibility and feasibility of the election process. The evaluation of the provincial council and water board elections once again confirms that continued attention is needed for the feasibility of the election process. One of the innovations the BZK is working on is a smaller and more manageable ballot paper format. This will be experimented with for the first time in a number of small municipalities during the European Parliament election in June 2024. A smaller size ballot paper is easier to handle for the voter and makes the counting process easier for the polling station members.
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