Counting votes took until 1 AM in hall C

Six students and two other volunteers counted over 1400 votes cast in yesterday’s General Election.

The preliminary result is a neck-and-neck race between D66 and VVD, who received 475 and 445 votes respectively. Some way behind was GroenLinks with 207 votes.

All the other parties remained far below the hundred votes. Of these, the 30 votes for DENK and 26 for the Forum voor Democratie are worth a mention. Among the small parties, the Piratenpartij and 50Plus received 4 votes. VNL got 3 and the Ondernemerspartij received 1 vote. One voter left his ballot paper blank, and unlike in the rest of Rotterdam, there were no invalid votes.

The results of a recent poll by Erasmus Magazine also showed that Pechtold’s party could rely on most support at EUR. Incidentally, the VVD did considerably less well in that poll.

Student Léon Vervooren was the chairman of the polling station during the ‘afternoon shift’ and was therefore also responsible for counting the votes. “It was pretty busy at this polling station; particularly in the morning there was a queue. The municipality uses an app to monitor how many votes have been cast, and later sent an extra box of ballot papers. After the final lectures, things got quieter. I’d say that it was mainly students and staff of the university who voted here, and very few from the surrounding neighbourhood.”

The initial count went smoothly, Vervooren explains. “In Rotterdam, we have a special method, whereby we count the votes as we walk around and pass them on to the chairperson of the polling station. In an hour and 45 minutes, we were able to count the votes at party level. Then we counted the preference votes, which took a bit longer because so many people voted here.”