Wilders spreads false accusations of election fraud

Last Friday, two days after the election, Geert Wilders posted a series of accusations of election fraud on X and Facebook. All of these accusations have since been debunked.

One of the stories he shared with his more than 1.6 million followers on X and his 595,000 followers on Facebook concerns Zaanstad. In a Facebook post, a polling station employee claims to have witnessed 15 containers full of completed and counted ballots being transported on a trailer and disappearing without a trace.

Nieuwscheckers tracked down the person who first posted this story on Facebook, but they responded: “My phone has been hacked. And I didn’t write this.” According to the municipal spokesperson, the report couldn’t possibly be true, if only because there aren’t any polling stations in Zaanstad where so many people vote that their ballots fill 15 containers. You can read the complete fact-checking report at Nieuwscheckers.

Another accusation by Wilders cast doubt on the impartiality of the Electoral Council (Kiesraad). He claimed that the Electoral Council’s security software was tested for vulnerability to hackers by a company founded by a D66 member. That is true…for the 2023 elections, when the PVV won and D66 fell from 24 to 9 seats. For the 2024 and 2025 elections, however, the software was tested by a different company, Fox-IT. [AFP, DPA]

Fact-checking by other media

You are allowed to take photos of your own ballot

Last week was the Dutch parliamentary election, and many voters shared selfies with their ballots on social media. Does that invalidate your vote? No, but it is prohibited to take photos of other people’s ballots. [AFP]

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Header picture: Sebastiaan ter Burg from Utrecht, The Netherlands, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons