A new national government will be elected in the Netherlands on 9 June; election anxieties always mount for me when I receive my free copy of the candidates list (see above), which this year carries the names of 672 candidates.
I have addressed the subject in earlier posts: please see, for example "EU Election Anxieties" on 31 May 2009, when the 289 candidates put to the test my abilities to get informed and make a real choice.
We who will cast ballots are meant to vote for a party, not an individual, but we who will wield the red pencils in the voting booths can vote for any 1 of the 672 people running for parliament. A candidate lower down on the list can squeak past fellow party members higher up on the list if enough preferential votes come in. Ambitions to do just that take some candidate MP's out on the campaign trail, but the leaders of the respective parties have the highest profile, of course.
As in other European countries, the right-wing in Holland is coming along very nicely, thank you. We the people who would prefer to see center-left at least one step ahead hope that the good weather continues so that enough of the electorate will find a visit to a polling station (all local sites printed on the back of the candidates lists produced and distributed for each individual voting district) a pleasant proposition.
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By the way, it's election day/evening now. Some polling stations are experiencing problems because voting is manual (too many defects in the digital system) everywhere which means that the ballots are as oversized in the photo above. Voters make one red mark on the ballot with 672 names, fold it up and jam it into a sealed box - the boxes aren't big enough for all of the ballots. In some areas the containers are shaken around to try and create more space inside.
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