Online Voting More Popular Than Ever

Election day is still three days away, but online elections have already concluded. Which party won the online vote is still a secret, but perhaps the biggest winner was the online voting system itself, as over 140 000 people, a little over 10% of the electorate, chose to vote online.

Online voting was first introduced during the 2005 local elections and has been gaining popularity ever since. In the 2009 local elections, 104 000 people voted online, a then-record, now easily beat by the parliamentary elections. The feat is even more impressive given that the size of the electorate who can vote in parliamentary elections is significantly smaller, as about 100,000 resident aliens living in Estonia are ineligible to vote in parliamentary elections.

This year, citizens could vote either using their state-issued identity cards and a smart-card reader, or using mobile identification, the same way you would log in to your bank account. Votes could be changed at any time during early voting and can still be changed by going to the polls on Election Day. 

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