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Dutch blog exploits loophole to scoop Euro poll result

22 May 2014, 17:25 CET
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(THE HAGUE) - A Dutch blog hopes to scoop the results of Thursday's European parliament elections by using a loophole to get around Brussels' demand that results be kept secret until Sunday.

Voters in the Netherlands and Britain are choosing their Euro MPs on Thursday, with the rest of the 28 European Union members choosing theirs on Sunday.

So as not to influence those who have not yet voted, the European Commission has ordered that Dutch authorities do not make any official announcement of the results before polls close everywhere on Sunday, something they neglected to do at the last election in 2009.

Polling organisations will take exit polls, but the GeenStijl.nl (No Style) blog has recruited over 2,000 volunteers to go to some of the around 10,000 polling stations where Dutch electoral law says the vote results must be read out after they are counted.

The volunteers will report the results, which are slated to be much more accurate than exit polls, and they will be given out on the blog's website and on Twitter with the hashtag #geenpeil (Dutch for 'no opinion poll') from when voting closes at 1900 GMT.

The irreverent blog -- whose slogan is "Biased, unfounded and needlessly offensive" -- interviewed Interior Minister Ronald Plasterk to ask if what they were doing was legal and he confirmed that it was.

"You've read the electoral law well," a smiling Plasterk said in a video on the blog's website.

There will not be any exit polls in Britain and no indication of results until Sunday night at the earliest.


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