
Great news for the true drinkers in the Dutch city of Tilburg. They’re gonna place a voting booth in the city centre at midnight.
In many countries no alcohol is served on voting days. To let the people come to a measured decision, or just show up at all. Well in the Netherlands the opposite is happening. For the next municipal elections in March 2014 Tilburg, the sixth biggest city of Holland, opens a special voting booths at midnight in the city centre to attract more voters. In other big cities like Rotterdam, The Hague and Groningen this was already the case four years ago. Several hundreds of people made a small stop to vote when they returned home from the bars.
Four parties (PvdA, D66, CDA and Voor Tilburg) in Tilburg supported the plan for ‘night voting’ and today mayor Peter Noordanus gave the green light. This mobile voting booth is placed in the city centre in between many bars. The plan is to co/operate with these bars and cultural institutions to attract more voters. Of course we support this initiative fully and we look forward to the giant streams of drunk people, drifting and crawling into the voting booths. Or to see them clinging on to the desks, hitting on the grannies that hand them the voting-papers.
Last municipal elections in Tilburg were in February 2010. Back then the CDA-party proposed the same just before the elections, but there wasn´t enough time to actually perform this plan. After night voting, or drunk voting if you will, was shut down only 45% of the residents in Tilburg went to vote in 2010. We´re positive that number will be significantly higher in 2014.
Micky Bumbar
oh, netherlands. as if you weren’t already awesome enough. 😉
LikeLike
Hahaha this development actually conflicts with other ones. Politicians want to close down coffee shops and red red light districts, where alcohol is heavier taxed than in Belgium and Germany. Plus they want to raise the minimum age for beer and wine to 18. This is some good news in dark times! 😉
LikeLike
‘[The Persians] are very partial to wine … it is their custom to deliberate about the gravest matters when they are drunk; and what they approve in their deliberations is proposed to them the next day, when they are sober, by the master of the house where they deliberate; and if, being sober, they still approve it, they act on it, but if not, they drop it. And if they have deliberated about a matter when sober, they decide upon it when they are drunk.’
— Herodotus, The Histories 1.133.3-4
LikeLike
Hahaha I didn’t know that! That is actually worth a post! 😀
LikeLike
Reblogged this on The Second Time Around and commented:
Forward thinking from my wife’s homeland!
LikeLike
Glad to be a dutchy, and even a Tilburger. Got on this page with luck, wassn’t dissapointed.
LikeLike
Thanks mate! Hope to see you shitfaced in the voting booth in March!
Cheers,
Micky
LikeLike