Over seven percent cast ballots this morning

By Janene Pieters on March 18, 2015 - 12:52
Provincial election 2015
A voter gives her election pass to a monitor at the Amsterdam Central Station polling place. March 18, 2015. (photo: Zack Newmark / NL Times)A voter gives her election pass to a monitor at the Amsterdam Central Station polling place. March 18, 2015. (photo: Zack Newmark / NL Times)

By 10:30 this morning 7 percent of voters had already cast their votes in the provincial elections. That is 1 percent less than in the elections four years ago, according to research firm Ipsos.

There have only been a few minor irregularities during the voting so far. The polling station in the province of South Holland only opened around 08:00 a.m. instead of 07:30 a.m., due to a problem with the placement of the voting booths, Omroep West reports.

There also seems to be a bit of confusion over which bin to place which ballot in. After both forms have been closed, a color band is visible to indicate which form goes into which bin. The confusion stems from the band on the water board form being green and the band on the provincial form being blue. "This is intuitively not very convenient." a spokesperson of the Electoral Council told the AD.

The final turnout for the provincial elections four years ago was remarkably high at 55.9 percent, NOS reports. The turnout is always much lower in the provincial elections than in the Tweede Kamer elections (parliamentary elections).

The first ballot stations opened at 05:00 a.m. at the trains stations in Castricum and Nijmegen. The rest of the polling stations, with the exception of the one in Noord Holland, opened at 07:30 a.m.

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