Fire alarm closes Meppel polling station; 1,250 in A'dam didn't get their voting pass

A polling station in Meppel was closed for 1.5 hours due to a fire in the town hall - the first reported issue with a polling station so far today. A polling station in Achtkarspelen in Friesland closed for an hour after the discovery of a printing error on some of the ballots. And an estimated 1,250 people in Amsterdam did not get their voting passes, the city told AT5.

Meppel

A fire broke out in a wiring harness at the Meppel town hall on Wednesday, causing quite a bit of smoke, Mayor Richard Korteland reported on X. The building was evacuated, and the polling station in the town hall was closed down while firefighters extinguished the fire and ventilated the building.

The polling station reopened at 12:30 p.m., about 90 minutes after closing. The other town hall services resumed at 1:00 p.m. The voter turnout in Meppel was 17 percent at 11:00 a.m., higher than the national turnout of 14 percent half an hour earlier.

Achtkarspelen

A printing error on several ballot papers in Achtkarspelen resulted in a black line across the box for D66 candidate Kajsa Ollongren. Misprinted ballots were found in 16 polling stations in the municipality, ANP reports. All except a polling station in the village of Buitenpost had sufficient correct ballot papers to keep going. The one in Buitenpost was closed for an hour until the Electoral Council confirmed that the misprinted ballot papers were still valid.

The Electoral Council has not received any reports from other municipalities about printing errors, a spokesperson told ANP. The issue in Actkarspelen, therefore, appears to be a local incident.

Amsterdam

The municipality of Amsterdam and PostNL distributed a total of 598,610 voting passes and received several reports from locals who didn’t receive theirs. Based on these reports, the city estimates that 1,250 residents didn’t get their voting pass, the city told AT5. They could request a replacement pass at their district office until noon on Tuesday. But several residents of Barbusselaan couldn’t make that deadline.

According to AT5, confusion arose because the residents of Barbusselaan did receive a list of candidates in the mail on Monday. Many thought it was their voting pass and only discovered too late that it wasn’t. The municipality told the broadcaster that it regrets the issue and will conduct an evaluation with PostNL.