The first voter

The results are in. You already know them, I don't. At the time of writing, I'm still in suspense. I haven't even made the 145 meters to the polling station in the church across from my house, knowing I'll vote for the wrong person again.

According to Peter Kanne of Ipsos I&O, five parties are neck and neck. I don't want to know, but I do. It all reminds me of the groundhog race from the "Wie Kent Kwis" ( Who Knows Quiz), Fred Oster's television show from a time when democracy wasn't as fragmented as it is today. He held up a story over a box of animals; the quiz contestant had to guess which one would be best able to walk to the box with the highest cash prize.

Every time I think I've figured it out, something else pops up that makes me doubt myself again. The game-changer: Jan Paternotte, who desperately wants to become a minister and was trying for the second time in a row to be the first voter in the Netherlands. He'd driven to Castricum especially for it at the end of the evening—by car, I think, because he lives in Leiderdorp and public transport runs out around midnight. Castricum resident Guus Bosland said: "Last year I was second, this year I'm first."

You could see Jan Paternotte getting annoyed: once again, sitting in a beach chair with a thermos in front of the polling station on Stationsweg, for nothing. The actions of a B-level politician who can't make it on a talk show floor with arguments and thinks being playful might give the voters a final push. Yes, the wrong way around. What kind of crazed D66 campaigner comes up with this? I'm afraid he's the one.

Jan Paternotte himself raised his hand at the meeting about crazy last-minute ideas: "I want to go back to Castricum, because that was also a television moment two years earlier." Crazy guy. Wearing a beige jacket, taking a staff member with him to talk all the Castricum voters in line behind Paternotte and to give his hair one last comb for when the camera crews finally arrive. A statue of Guus Bosland that he refused to budge. Like most Dutch people, he was thinking of himself first, not of Paternotte, who was supposedly posing for our future.

Marcel van Roosmalen writes a column on Mondays and Thursdays.