Voting cards that did not reach all citizens, counting of votes that took days in certain places, uncertainty among voters about how they could vote from a municipality other than the one in which they were registered: these were some of the ‘points for improvement’ from the evaluation report of the Electoral Council after the 2023 House of Representatives elections.
At that time the parties were still forming.
The evaluation report also writes about “calling on PostNL to take responsibility for reliable postal delivery”. Because prior to the November 2023 elections, thousands of voting cards were not delivered due to errors at PostNL. Since the report, the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations (BZK) has done little about this: during her mandate, then Minister Uitermark (NSC) wrote once about postal delivery, but that was about relaxing the delivery time at PostNL, because the volume of letterbox mail is decreasing.
What is now PostNL – formerly PTT – and therefore has little say in the privatized company. BZK cannot guarantee anything in terms of delivery times, so leave it up to you NRC know.
It therefore came as no surprise that these were also passes that had not arrived: in some Amsterdam, Eindhoven and The Hague districts the voting passes were lost, just like in Huissen, Haarlem and Sittard-Geleen.
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To count
The Dutch score just above average in turnout percentage for national elections, compared to other European countries. Nevertheless, the Electoral Council sees areas for improvement, such as a “simplification” of the ballot paper, the form on which citizens submit their votes. The note should be shorter, the 2024 report stated. No adjustments have been made since then.
Another point from the 2024 report: . Because all votes have to be counted and checked manually, and sometimes they are hercounted, it may take longer before the results are known. Digital voting could possibly be faster, but this is not yet the case in the Netherlands. The 2024 advisory report also does not mention digital casting of votes.
In the Netherlands you can in principle only vote in the municipality where you are registered, unless you (only an option in advance). The Electoral Council recommends more clarity about this by better instructing polling station members about this option and by better stating information about voting outside your own municipality on the voting card.
The process is indicated on the voting cards for upcoming elections with an extra paragraph, the instructions to polling station members have not changed. The central government may choose to set up a separate campaign about this, the Electoral Council said, and this may follow. The Electoral Council’s advice is therefore: “Read your voting card carefully, it tells you how you can vote elsewhere.”
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