Reliable turnout figures within minutes
The municipal elections in Eemsdelta will go down in Dutch constitutional history as the first elections to be held during the coronavirus pandemic. Thanks in part to Shift2's MijnStembureau app, everything went smoothly.
Effective January 1, 2021, the municipalities of Appingedam, Delfzijl, and Loppersum will merge into one new municipality: Eemsdelta. In the run-up to the municipal elections on November 18, 2020, Shift2 (formerly Procura) took a lot of work off their hands. As the IT partner of the three cooperating municipalities, it implemented Shift2's election software, among other things, to relieve civil servants before, after, and during the elections.
The municipal reorganization election is now over. Senior Civil Affairs Officer Wilhelm de Vries looks back on a successful day.
The MijnStembureau app is a practical tool that saves municipalities a lot of time and supports polling station chairpersons.
Extensive testing
Two weeks prior to the municipal elections, the app was extensively tested by eight polling station chairpersons. Thanks to the handout and a PowerPoint presentation with instructions and installation of the MijnStembureau app, this went very smoothly. This enabled the chairpersons to test the fictitious polling station session in ten minutes. At 7 p.m., the polling station was registered. Five minutes later, the interim turnout was in, and at 7:10 p.m., the preliminary results at party level could be reported, after which the polling station was deregistered.
Rap tempo
The municipal reorganization election took place on Wednesday, November 18, and the app was put into practice that same day. Due to COVID-19, this election was under close scrutiny. Administrators, both local and national, were very interested in the turnout figures. De Vries: "The fact that we were able to report these quickly made the day even more successful. It had been agreed with the chairpersons that they would report the turnout figures at 10:00 a.m., 2:00 p.m., and 5:00 p.m. To my surprise, we received the data within six minutes of the agreed times. This meant that the Elections Office was also able to publish it quickly."
Control over your elections too?
We would be happy to tell you what we can do for your organization.