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Originally Posted by Antagon
The Netherlands being so restrictive with it just caught me off-guard.
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Yeah, it's really stupid, I also don't understand. The 70+ people are allowed to vote by mail, but many of them have been vaccinated by now. However those in other risk categories, e.g. handicapped or with bad health due to lung disease do have to go to the polling station (the other option is to authorize someone to vote for you).
Also, we still vote with pencil and paper, electronic voting in any way is considered to be too fraudulent. One would think that in this time it should be possible to vote online from home with your PC or mobile or tablet.
Or even go to the polling station and vote on some machine, instead we still do it the medieval way by checking a box with a red pencil on a paper leaflet which has 1579 names on it:
Anyway, we're still making a total mess of the postal voting
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Minister Ollongren adjusts postal voting procedure
Interior Minister Ollongren is adjusting the procedure for counting postal votes, she writes in a letter to the House of Representatives. Post votes that have not been sent in accordance with the rules may still be counted under certain conditions.
People over 70 have already been able to vote by letter due to the corona virus. They received a postal ballot and a 'voting plus pass' at home, a voting pass especially for this target group. They were supposed to put the ballot paper in a separate envelope and send it to the postal polling station together with their voting plus pass in a return envelope.
But in some cases, the postal ballot and the voting plus pass ended up in the same envelope. The rules stipulate that these envelopes may not be opened because of the secrecy of the vote. This meant that about 7 to 8 percent of the postal votes were invalid and had to be set aside.
Do not unfold
Ollongren now says that employees of the postal polling station are allowed to open envelopes where possible with both a ballot paper and a voting plus pass. They must then first check whether the voting plus pass is valid. If so, employees can put the enclosed ballot paper in the ballot box without viewing or unfolding it. "In this way, voting secrecy is safeguarded", writes Ollongren.
The Minister has requested advice from the Council of State and the Electoral Council regarding the amendment of the procedure . They have informed her that they see room for this. Ollongren says she will inform municipalities this morning about the new method, so that they can apply it tomorrow at the latest.
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Apologies for becoming too offtopic, but hey it's still an election during Covid times ...
But in other news, we've simlar to many other European countries postponed vaccinations with AstraZeneca. Only Belgium is still continuing afaik.