Ministry recognizes postal voting problems elections

He added, “We have agreed with the municipalities to disqualify these postal votes, as indicated in the instructions.” The Home Office does not want to give out any numbers yet. “Because it concerns a large percentage, we are consulting with the electoral council,” he added.

However, it has already become clear that postal voting will not go smoothly in some places. Bernheze City’s first count (Noord-Brabant) shows that about 8.5 percent of the submitted postal votes are invalid. Usually around 0.3% of the vote is voided. Similar problems have been reported at Súdwest Fryslân, Gouda, and Enschede.

Wrong envelope

One of the main reasons for declaring the vote invalid is that the ballot paper and the ballot paper were in the same envelope. This is not the intention. The vote must remain secret, such an envelope cannot be opened. These postal votes are ignored. Thus, a properly submitted vote could still be rejected for other reasons. Bottom line, they both mean they don’t count, not even in turnout.

Earlier, the outgoing Minister Olungren (Home Affairs) wrote to the House of Representatives that 2.5 percent of the first 400,000 postal votes received by PostNL were declared invalid. It comes to about 10,000 votes in total. The errors that are still being discovered can still be corrected until Wednesday, but then voters will receive a regular ballot paper as a substitute. On Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays a lot of the postal votes are still checked.

Groningen and Heerenveen

You’ll lose at least 300 votes in Heerenveen, Leeuwarder Courant writes. Ten percent of the 3,000 postal votes received by the municipality on Monday afternoon are invalid. Voters violated their voting secrecy by placing the signed Voting Plus Pass in the same envelope as the completed ballot. However, the home country voters were sent two envelopes. One for the ballot, and one for the ballot envelope, along with the + voting card.

A spokeswoman for the municipality of Groningen in Oldampt said: “People were also allowed to make physical delivery in their postal vote at the town hall on Monday. There, colleagues actively checked the thickness of the envelopes presented. If the thickness did not look ‘right’, they asked what was inside. Well, people were given a new envelope and new instructions to submit a valid vote. “

North Holland

Alkmaar says through a spokesperson that the municipality has no major problems voting by mail: “Of the 4,850 envelopes received, we had to allocate 150 envelopes, a little more than 3 percent, which would not count towards the vote. We are not upset. So “.

The municipality of Heemsted received 2,121 postal votes, 94 of which were not counted: in 74 cases the vote plus a pass was missing and in 20 cases the postal ballot was not sent, a spokesperson for De Telegraaf said.

Nearly 1,900 votes were received by mail at Bloemendaal through Monday morning. About 5 percent of that amount is invalid, I tell the municipality. For 80 percent of the invalidated votes, the ballot paper and the ballot paper were placed in one envelope. It had to be done separately. “According to the election law, this envelope cannot be opened due to the secrecy of the vote. Usually the number of invalid votes is 1.25%.”

Harlem reports that in the interim count, 4 percent of the postal votes were found to be invalid.

Brabant and Limburg

In Brabant, as many as thousands of postal votes are invalid, according to Omroep Brabant’s first tour. In Tilburg, according to a census conducted by the municipality, this relates to roughly 10 percent of the 7,000 votes. In Bergen op Zoom, about seven percent of the 4,703 published votes are invalid, a spokesperson for the local broadcaster said.

In Bergen op Zoom, the spokesperson estimates that 7 to 8 percent were declared invalid because the first envelope did not contain a signed voting permit. “We will not open the other envelope containing the ballot until Wednesday,” he added.

Roermond estimates the number of rejected postal votes at around 5 percent.

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