Last updated on December 17, 2013

Following the November 2006 general elections, two commissions of independent experts on electronic voting were established by Minister Nicolaï. The first, The Voting Machines Decision-making Commission, was set up on December 19, 2006. Its purpose was to review how decisions on the approval of voting machines had been made in the past, and what lessons could be learned. The second, the Election Process Advisory Commission, was established on January 18, 2007, to examine the current organization of the election process and make proposals for future elections in the Netherlands.

The Voting Machines Decision-making Commission was chaired by a high-level politician of the Liberal Party (VVD) and included a professor of public administration who specialized in public/private issues. The Election Process Advisory Commission was chaired by Honorary Minister F. Korthals Altes and was composed of five additional members drawn from academia, the private sector and public administration. 

The Voting Machines Decision-making Commission published its report Voting Machines: an Orphaned File on April 16, 2007.⁵⁵ The report was critical of the government’s past role in electronic voting, concluding that voting machines did not receive the attention they deserved. It found that the MOIKR did not have enough technical knowledge, leading to a situation in which officials became too dependent on external actors for the conduct of elections. In this situation, technology vendors became part of the decision making process and the ministry was not in a position to exercise effective oversight. It also criticized the government for not reacting to signals that should have caused concern, including the critical report on NEDAP voting machines that was released in Ireland in 2004. 

The Voting Machines Decision-making Commission was also critical of the laboratory TNO’s role in the certification and testing process, finding they were certifying and testing the voting machines according to outdated standards that had not been updated to deal with modern IT and security threats. The certification and testing reports were not made public, depriving independent experts the opportunity to verify the analysis. The report was also critical of the legal framework, which did not deal adequately with the specificities of the electronic voting process, particularly the necessary security requirements.

The Election Process Advisory Commission released its report Voting with Confidence on September 23, 2007.⁵⁶ The report laid out a number of principles⁵⁷ that the commission believed should be safeguarded in the election process, and discussed the various methods of voting used in the Netherlands (i.e. paper ballots, electronic voting, postal voting, Internet voting, voting by telephone and proxy voting) in light of these principles. 

The Election Process Advisory Commission noted, with particular concern, that requirements for election-related equipment had not been adequately established and that the security and management of the equipment were not properly regulated. It also noted that electronic voting machines in use were not sufficiently transparent and verifiable, as there is no way to determine that votes have been accurately recorded and/or stored. It further suggested that audits be conducted during elections to detect any errors or incidents related to the results and to learn lessons for the future.

The Election Process Advisory Commission concluded that voting at polling stations should be the main method of voting in the Netherlands, that each municipality should have the same method of voting and that voting by paper ballot is the preferable option, on the grounds of transparency and verifiability. However, given the problems caused by manual counting of the ballots, the commission investigated whether other electronic options would be feasible and still safeguard the principles. It suggested that a ballot printer and ballot counter could be feasible, as they would produce a paper ballot that could be checked by the voter. However, no such alternative electronic option has been adopted to date.

^{55 Report available in Dutch at www.rijksoverheid.nl/documenten-enpublicaties/rapporten/2007/04/17/stemmachines-een-verweesd-dossier.html}

^{56 Report available at http://wijvertrouwenstemcomputersniet.nl/English}

^{57 Transparency, verifiability, fairness, eligibility to vote, free suffrage, secret suffrage, equal suffrage and accessibility. These principles are enshrined in the Dutch Constitution or in international and European treaties and recommendations.}

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Netherlands: Decision to End Electronic Voting