Counting ballots by hand too expensive, unreliable: Dutch municipalities

Interior Minister Ronald Plasterk's decision to count the votes in the parliamentary elections by hand is unpractical, according to the Dutch association for local governments NVVB. Counting the ballots by hand is expensive, will take a long time and is unreliable, the NVVB said in a statement.

Minister Plasterk announced on Wednesday that all votes will be counted by hand to completely rule out the possibility of the results being manipulated by hackers. This follows warnings from American experts that Russian hackers may target the Dutch elections and research by Dutch cyber security expert Sijmen Ruwhof that concluded that "the average iPad is better secured than the Dutch election system."

According to the association, having to count the ballots manually will take more people, more time, more money and "a computer is better at counting than a human". This is all unnecessary as the security problems with the Electoral software can be solved more simply by tanking "some other measures". Exactly what those measures are, the NVVB does not say.