For years I had a somewhat naive assumption that the people who worked at the polling stations were civil servants. Or, at least, people who have studied for this. It wasn’t until a few years ago that I realized that anyone, me, you, anyone, could do this job. Everyone can be a guardian of democracy. So I ended up, together with a retiree, an employee at the Ministry of Education, a project leader at the NVWA and a business administration student, in a gymnasium in the heart of Utrecht, where climbing frames and skippy balls had been created. for three voting booths and two ballot boxes.

We rotated tasks (passport control, voting card scanning, issuing ballot papers, monitoring ballot boxes). There is something strange about this, because this is human work; we only scan tickets with an iPad, but count and record everything by hand. We make a rest schedule. Because, the chairman and old officer at the polling station warned: “This is going to be a long day.” Never before have I been said good morning, and now also good afternoon, so many times, and let’s not forget the children in this elementary school, who without hesitation looked in through the windows and waved and expressed their political preferences more freely. shame (‘Party Animals!’) is heard throughout the schoolyard – you have to do something if you yourself are not allowed to choose.

“It’s a happy day,” said a man who had just come to jump around. “It’s great to be able to choose, we are all gathered here.” “Good, yes,” said our chairman, handing over a third stack of voting cards: fifty more, by about eleven we had over a hundred, the hundredth could hold a pencil, we said, just as 18 and 19 year olds could voted for the first time. A boy lets his mother take a photo, gives a thumbs up, slides a bill into the slot.

There are no long queues yet – the peak will come tonight. “It’s comfortable and quiet here,” said almost every voter who came that morning, after which almost every voter had difficulty getting a ballot. This reminded the previous election chairman as a TPS member: “Then there was a man who was so angry because he didn’t succeed, that in his anger he crumpled the ballot paper into one big lump. Then the form is no longer there. fits perfectly.”

Folding it again in particular seems impossible, say two women from the UK. They point to their badges, they are members of the Democratic Volunteers organization, which, according to the Election Board on the site, has dozens of election observers working across the country right now, as well as four other organizations from the United States, South Korea, and South Korea. Montenegro and North Macedonia. Volunteers monitor the voting process at polling stations – is everything ‘fair and free’?

“There are a lot of ballots in your country,” said one observer. “There are fewer choices in the UK, but there is also less inconvenience.”

The women visited seven locations in the city, and then left for two other nearby cities. “I’m also going to go to the polls at the Miffy Museum here in Utrecht,” one of the two grinned, “sounds like a good place.”

What I didn’t know: there were also people who visited several times as observers. Once to vote, and then ‘to make sure that you are all OK and so on’, according to a woman from the neighborhood who had already come twice in the morning. He checked that the unused ballot box was completely empty before we locked it and used it. “Just to be sure,” he said.

Apart from that, there are also those who are still shouting while walking towards the voting booth (‘it’s difficult, it’s difficult’), there are also ignorant people who are in the wrong municipality, after which we have to explain that you are only allowed to vote in the wrong municipality. your own municipality unless you have the emperor’s permission which you request. And occasionally there are acquaintances from TPS members, meaning that as a TPS member you sometimes ask your partner or good friend: “Can I see your ID?”

A mini link in our democracy

We kept turning, taking breaks, we kept walking in circles, because anyone who sits too long behind a long table will get cold, we already found out after a few hours, even though my friend at TPS had bought some extra sweaters at home and there were blankets in in the box the municipality gave us, as well as tea, kettle, ginger nuts and chips. Much needed, because it’s going to be a very long day: at 9pm, three extra counters report, four at very busy polling stations, then the doors close and the problem is the prostitutes collecting ballots in tens of thousands of polling stations around the world. Dutch Unfold, count, stay focused, count, if not, drink another cola, or rather coffee, count, count and count. So we – five people who didn’t know each other until this morning and all the other volunteers – formed a small relationship in what we call democracy.