All eligible voters should have received voting passes for municipal elections by now

All eligible Dutch citizens should have received their voting pass as municipal elections draw near on March 16. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, many polling stations will also be open the Monday and Tuesday before the official date.

In total, 13.6 million people will have the right to vote in the municipal elections. More than one in 20 will receive a voting pass for the first time at home, according to the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS).

Voters must bring their voting pass and proof of identity. Their pass will list the nearest polling station’s address, but voters are also allowed to visit a different office in the same municipality.

The right to vote applies to almost everyone over 18 who lives in the Netherlands, which is 98 percent of the population. People are also allowed to vote if they come from an EU member state or are non-EU citizens who have lived in the Netherlands for more than five years. 

In Amstelveen, a tenth of the population is comprised of non-EU citizens who have lived in the Netherlands for less than five years, and are therefore ineligible to vote. In Wageningen and Diemen there are also relatively many people who are not allowed to vote.

Around 840,000 young people will have reached the voting age and therefore be allowed to vote for the first time in the March 14, 15 and 16 municipal elections. Many of these young voters probably live in student cities like Groningen or Utrecht, according to the CBS.

A quarter of voters are younger than 35 years old. In the student city of Groningen, this number is even higher at 43 percent. In municipalities like Utrecht, Wageningen and Delft, the amount of young people eligible to vote is also higher than average.

The voting population has aged relatively significantly in the north, east, Zuid-Limburg, Zeeland, along the North Sea coast, and in the Gooi and Vecht regions. The municipality of Laren has the highest proportion of older voters, followed by Bergen and Westerveld.