At least 1,000 votes from Dutch abroad arrived too late

Of the 105,000 Dutch people abroad who registered to vote in the parliamentary elections, at least 926 votes arrived too late to be counted, the Volkskrant reports based on information from the national postal polling station, organized by the municipality of The Hague.

In an election where 160 votes cost the D66 a seat in parliament, those uncounted votes could have made a real difference. Rob Jetten’s party did relatively well among voters abroad, getting over 10 percent of the postal votes compared to 6.3 percent of the total votes.

Most voters abroad voted for GroenLinks-PvdA (28.5 percent). The PVV got only 6 percent of postal votes.

Joris van Hulzen is one of the voters whose ballot probably did not arrive on time, he told the newspaper. The Dutchman has lived in London for 25 years. As a precaution, he posted his ballot on November 4, 18 days before the election. PostNL’s tracking code showed that Van Hulzen’s ballot crossed the Channel on November 13, and then got stuck. “The PostNL site indicated that the mail truck was full.” The status of his ballot still says, “the delivery time is still being calculated.”

Such delays in postal shipments are an excellent reason to declare votes from abroad still valid a few days after the election, Eelco Keij, chairman of the Dutch People Outside the Netherlands Foundation, told the Volkskrant. “Online voting would be best, but there is no majority in favor of that,” Keij said.

Keij also questions that 105,000 Dutch people registered to vote from abroad, but only 69,000 votes were received. He considers it unlikely that 35,000 people decided not to vote after going through the effort to register. “We only know which votes arrived late, not which ballots have disappeared.”

A spokesperson for the municipality of The Hague suspects that the significant difference between registered voters and received votes is partly because the registration system has been simplified. “Registration can now be done by email. The threshold for registration is, therefore, lower than for casting a vote.”