Take your pick ...

Today's the main day of the Dutch parliamentary elections and the voters have the choice  between 37 political parties with1579 candidates in total for seats in parliament for the next 4 years. There are no constituencies in Dutch parliamentary elections, every valid vote gets counted and counts and seats will be awarded according to the number of votes and its percentage from the total of votes. However preferential votes can get somebody low on a party's candidate list into parliament.

There are 5-7 main parties and they're usually the ones who, after the election results are in, will form a coalition to form a government. As it's basically impossible with all that choice for one party to have an absolute majority in parliament there will always have to be cooperation between a couple of parties which leads to much debate and compromises. Nobody can get to fulfil their party election programs totally. So a Dutch voter will have to find a party that has an election program that comes closest to their own ideas and realise that not everything they wish for will come true. That's life and real democracy, one big compromise because there are as many opinions as there are voters !
Take your pick :-)

Thanks very much for the kind comments and stars for yesterday's orchid macro !

Oops, almost forgot ! Tomorrow's optional theme for Abstract Thursday is 'repetition' and the tag will be AT299 !