Ministry acknowledges problems with postal votes | Elections

“We have agreed with municipalities that they will set these postal votes aside, as indicated in the instructions.” Home Affairs does not want to give any figures yet. “Because it concerns a considerable percentage, we are in consultation with the Electoral Council.”

However, it has already become clear that postal voting is not going to go smoothly in some places. The first count of the municipality of Bernheze (Noord-Brabant) shows that about 8.5 percent of the submitted postal votes are invalid. Usually about 0.3 percent of the votes are invalid. Similar problems were reported in Súdwest Fryslân, Gouda and Enschede.

Wrong envelope

A major reason that a vote was declared invalid is because the ballot card and ballot paper were in the same envelope. That is not the intention. A vote must remain secret, so that such an envelope cannot be opened. Such postal votes are discarded. Subsequently, a properly submitted vote can still be rejected for other reasons. Bottom line, both mean that they do not count, not even in turnout.

Earlier, outgoing Minister Ollongren (Internal Affairs) wrote to the House of Representatives that 2.5 percent of the first 400,000 postal votes received by PostNL had been declared invalid. It concerns a total of about 10,000 votes. Errors that are still being discovered can still be corrected until Wednesday, but then voters will receive a regular ballot paper as a replacement. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday are still plenty of postal votes checked.

Groningen and Heerenveen

In Heerenveen, at least 300 votes are lost, writes the Leeuwarder Courant. Ten percent of the 3000 postal votes received by the municipality by Monday afternoon are invalid. Voters violated their own voting secrecy by putting their signed Voting Plus Pass in the same envelope as their completed ballot paper. Home voters, however, received two envelopes. One for the ballot paper, and one for the ballot envelope, along with the voting plus pass.

A spokeswoman for the Groningen municipality of Oldambt says: “People were also allowed to physically hand in their postal vote at the town hall on Monday. There, colleagues actively checked for the thickness of the envelopes submitted. And if the thickness didn’t feel ‘right’, they asked what was in it. If that was not good, 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 with voting by mail: “Of the 4,850 received envelopes, we had to set aside 150, a little more than 3 percent, which will not count in the vote. We are not dissatisfied with that. ”

The municipality of Heemstede received 2,121 postal votes, 94 of which do not count: in 74 cases the voting plus pass was missing and in 20 cases the postal ballot paper was not sent, a spokesperson told De Telegraaf.

Approximately 1900 postal votes had been received in Bloemendaal until Monday morning. About 5 percent of that is invalid, let the municipality know. For 80 percent of the invalid votes, the ballot paper and the voting pass pass were put in one envelope. This should have been done separately. “Under the Elections Act it is not allowed to open this envelope because of the secrecy of the vote. The number of invalid votes is normally 1.25%. ”

Haarlem reports that at a provisional count 4 percent of the postal votes turned out to be invalid.

Brabant and Limburg

In Brabant at least thousands of postal votes are invalid, according to a first tour of Omroep Brabant. In Tilburg, according to a count by the municipality, this concerns about 10 percent of the 7,000 votes. In Bergen op Zoom, about seven percent of the 4,703 postal votes are invalid, a spokesman told the local broadcaster.

In Bergen op Zoom, a spokesman estimates that 7 to 8 percent has been declared invalid because the first envelope did not contain a signed voting pass. “We are not going to open the other envelope containing the ballot paper until Wednesday.”

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

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