People who want to vote for the Top 2000 of NPO Radio 2 must confirm their vote by e-mail an extra time this year. The organization has built in a verification step to prevent any manipulation.
It is not the first time that voters have to verify their Top 2000 list. The verification was previously removed in order to make voting as accessible as possible. “We have chosen to reintroduce the verification step,” says NPO Radio 2 channel manager Peter de Vries. “We are currently seeing a movement that we have to pay extra attention to.”
At the end of October, the election for the NS Publieksprijs was halted because voting had been “manipulated on a large scale”. After the first irregularities, the organization built in a verification step, but because a fair result could not be determined with certainty, the entire election was called off. During the voting period, complaints were received from MPs who claimed that their e-mail address had been used. They would have voted for Het Coronabedrog, the book by Thierry Baudet.
Remarkable voice acting
De Vries says that things stand out every year when voting the Top 2000 and that that certainly does not mean that the organization always has to intervene. “Just look at last year. Then we saw a record of Bankzitters that we thought: what is this? It turned out to be a group of youtubers, which is extremely popular, especially among the youth. “I got a talk from my youngest son about how great these boys were. Within a minute I realized that this was simply the result of binding a new generation to us.”
NPO Radio 2 opens the ballot box on Thursday morning for the 24th edition of the Top 2000, which is traditionally broadcast between Christmas and New Year’s Eve. In the coming week, people can vote again for their favorite songs that should be included in the annual all-time list.