THE HAGUE, Netherlands — THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Dutch voters in Wednesday’s general election choice They have many options to choose from.

The country’s electoral commission has registered no fewer than 27 parties and 1,166 candidates competing for the 150 seats up for grabs in the House of Representatives.

That means a big ballot because it carries the names of all the parties and the candidates on each party’s list. The results are crumpled papers as voters dispute large ballots and use a small red pencil to mark their choice, before folding the paper and pressing it through a slot in the ballot box. When polling stations close, vote counters across the country have to unfold the sheets again to count the results.

The difficult handling of ballots has become such a problem that this year five municipalities are experimenting with smaller, simplified ballots. They include a list of parties and numbers, while the names of the candidates and their numbers are on a separate sign at the voting booths.

Ballot size is a potent symbol of the fragmentation of Dutch politics at a time of deepening social divisions, but it is not a new phenomenon.

There have long been many parties in Dutch politics, but in the past a few big names took most of the votes, making it easier to form coalitions. In 1986, for example, 27 parties were at the polls and nine won at least one seat, but three parties (the Christian Democrats, the Labor Party and the center-right People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy) dominated with 54, 52 and 27 seats, respectively.

This year’s vote appears close, according to polls, with the far-right Freedom Party, led by anti-Islam lawmaker Geert Wilders, on track. gain for the second consecutive elections, but the center-left and center-right parties are also in the running.

All a party needs to do to appear at the polls is pay a deposit of 11,250 euros ($13,077) and collect 580 statements of support.

To determine who gets seats, the electoral commission adds up all valid votes and divides them among the 150 seats. For example, in 2023 there were 10,432,726 valid votes, meaning that any party that got 69,551 or more would get a seat. It was good news for the populist JA21, which obtained 71,345 votes and one seat, but not so much for BVNL/Groep Van Haga, which obtained 52,913 votes and came up empty-handed.

The sheer number of options translates into a plethora of parties in parliament. When the last four-party coalition government collapsed At the beginning of this year, there were 15 parties in the House of Representatives.

That, in turn, makes forming a coalition increasingly difficult. Talks to form a government that can command a majority can take months.