The Association of Dutch Municipalities (VNG) hopes that next year’s municipal elections will allow for the first experiment with electronically countable ballot papers. That sounds nice, but if you look at the note, you can quickly see that a lot can go wrong.
The ballot paper in its current form seems to be getting bigger and bigger, and that doesn’t make counting any easier. It is therefore logical that there will be experiments with a more compact, easier to count ballot paper. Until you see the monstrosity…
The new ballot paper that a number of municipalities will be experimenting with during the municipal elections next year.
So you have to color in a ball for the party and a number of the candidate of your choice (you will receive a booklet with an overview). @BNR pic.twitter.com/IXR4M64mUC
— Thomas van Groningen (@TvanGroningen) July 30, 2021
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Quite apart from the possible mistrust that people have towards electronic counting machines, this ballot paper is of course doomed to fail. Many people were already unable to vote by post, so the whole process of ‘pick a party, find the candidate and enter the candidate’s number’ must also be too difficult.
And if you don’t want to make any effort or have forgotten the candidate’s number somewhere halfway through the search process, just put a bullet next to number 1. And if you only fill in one bullet, then the vote is invalid.
Fortunately, there will be experiments in only four small municipalities, so the damage will be limited. But it seems very likely that this voting process has not been tested with average citizens first. The idea, or so it seems, comes directly from the VNG. A streamlined process has been the starting point, instead of simple use for the citizen.
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In that regard, it makes more sense to investigate blockchain technology, to see whether the voting process can be facilitated in this way. Where in the past digital voting sometimes proved to be susceptible to fraud, this is no longer the case with these types of techniques. In principle, an open source system could remove any doubt, because it can be made clear to everyone whether certain outcomes have been tinkered with, while every voter can simply remain anonymous.
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:quality(80)/cdn-kiosk-api.telegraaf.nl/6d59178a-f235-11eb-a911-0217670beecd.jpg "Man taunts jaguar at zoo and gets beat up | Abroad")
