Land van Cuijk streamlined its municipal elections with Shift2

The challenges surrounding the redivision election

Land van Cuijk serves more than 90,000 residents in an area of over 351 square kilometers. Of those residents, 73,959 were eligible to vote in the new municipal council elections on November 22, 23, or 24, 2021. There were a number of hurdles to overcome before the elections could take place.

• Merging databases
  Five municipalities meant five large databases containing polling station officials and polling stations. These five databases had to be merged into a single database in order to enable the reorganization elections to take place.
• Organizing coronavirus-proof elections
  At the time of the municipal elections, the Netherlands was still in lockdown. The elections had to be organized in a coronavirus-proof manner to minimize the risk of infection.
• Getting a grip on a major election
  For the municipalities, it was the first time they had to organize an election of this magnitude. Getting a grip on this is a greater challenge than when it has to be done for a smaller municipality.
• Digitization
  Elections are still often conducted on paper, which means that not all polling station officials and chairpersons are accustomed to working with automated systems. Familiarizing these employees with the new environment also presented a challenge.

Land van Cuijk therefore needed a partner who could not only streamline processes, but above all take care of everything.

Control and streamlining during the elections

In order to organize the elections effectively, Land van Cuijk recognized the need to collaborate with a partner who could support them with all their challenges. Shift2 (formerly Procura) offered the support the municipality needed. Together with Elections Project Manager Astrid van Leeuwen and Consultant Maarten van der Veer, the day was a success by choosing solutions that matched the level of support Land van Cuijk was looking for.

Our team worked intensively on the merger of our municipalities and on preparations for the elections. Shift2 took care of a number of important matters for us, which meant we had nothing to worry about. Maarten handled the migration of databases and then showed us the possibilities of Shift2's election solution. Shift2 understood the importance of our elections at every step of the process. They were also available around the clock during the elections. That was great, because it allowed everyone to do their job a little better."  said Diny Geerlings, project leader for the redivision elections.

Automated reporting of attendance figures

In order to maintain a central overview of the various polling stations and the different days, but also to provide a tool for the chairpersons of the polling stations, Land van Cuijk also decided to work with the MijnStembureau app. From that app, the chairperson could tick off the digital checklist, turnout figures could be reported in real time, and at the end of the election day, the preliminary results could be reported automatically. This was useful, especially since the election results were presented entirely digitally due to the lockdown in effect at the time.

Announcing the results is, of course, incredibly exciting. The pressure is high and you want everything to go smoothly. What's more, there's nothing you can do about the technical aspects at that point. But everything went really well. Everyone was very satisfied with how it went. Even the board complimented us on how well it had gone.

Future-proof solutions

The day went smoothly at Land van Cuijk, and the solutions will continue to be used in the future. And that's not the only thing Diny is happy about: "Shift2 took a lot of work off our hands. The solutions ensured that our election process was of high quality and well and efficiently organized. We also enjoyed the contact. We will definitely continue to use the solutions!

Significant savings on postage and paper costs

By working with the Polling Station Members portal, Land van Cuijk was able to easily contact, assign, and instruct polling station members. Messages and appointment decisions were sent digitally to the polling station members, saving on paper and postage costs. In addition, the chance of a message not arriving was greatly reduced, because it was possible to check exactly when each message had been sent. This worked well for the municipality.

In addition to saving us a lot of postage costs, the portal has taken a lot of manual work off our hands. All users were very enthusiastic about this.