The Netherlands was one of the countries to vote early in the EU parliamentary elections this year -- and it may end up in hot water due to releasing results early -- so I did my bit. Now that things are over here, the paper is full of opinion articles on how the voting and campaigns were totally useless. Seems like a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy there. In any case the biggest surprise in voting for me was casting a vote on paper. There were legal challenges to the voting machines -- closed-source, not effectively auditable -- over the winter and therefore things have switched back to paper. Seems now I need to think about the security of a big plastic bin again from a democratic perspective.