Today we had national parliamentary elections. Just before lunch E and I went to vote. As usual voting was uneventful, this time with added face masks and hand sanitizer.
Our neighbourhood polling station
This time around, to enable people to avoid lines, our city published live data on how busy polling stations are. Allowing you to choose one without too many people (you can pick any polling station in the municipality you reside in). Based on public data streams, and on Open Street Map. Well done.
amersfoort.stemdrukte.nl showing current activity at polling stations
The Open State Foundation (I’m a board member) published their current map of polling stations again at ‘Where’s my polling station‘, as they did for the national elections 4 years ago and the local elections since then. Their map is also Open Street Map based. OSF gets their data from each single municipality and republishes it as a national dataset.
Waarismijnstemlokaal.nl, where is my polling station, with info on each polling station in the Netherlands
Good to see how open data is used to strengthen the democratic process in its most direct form.
‘Hart van Vathorst’ was probably not busy. As it’s a retirement home on 2nd floor and up, business probably stems from inhabitants 😉