Tucked away in a business park just outside Zevenhuizen, 25 kilometres (16 miles) east of the Dutch city The Hague, voters are trying out the drive-in polling station, a new system of casting ballots.
Avoiding the queues of traditional polling stations, citizens can pull up in their cars, register with polling officials, and drop their ballots into the large wheeled bins used as ballot boxes.
The chairman of the drive-through voting center in Zevenhuizen said this new alternative is designed to encourage people to go the polls.
The Dutch are testing their own tolerance for immigration and Islam in an election magnified by a furious row with Turkey, the first of three polls in the European Union this year where nationalist parties are seeking breakthroughs.
As many as 13 million voters began casting ballots at polling stations across the country that will close at 2000 GMT.
Voter turnout on Wednesday (March 15) was far higher than five years ago according to pollster Ipsos, which is conducting an exit poll. At 1245 GMT, when polls had been open for just over six hours, turnout was estimated at 33 percent, compared to 27 percent at the last election in 2012, when final turnout was 74.6 percent.
(REUTERS)