On April 13th, Democracy Volunteers deployed 16 observers across Finland for the municipal and county elections. The team visited the cities of Helsinki, Espoo, Rauma, Turku, Pori, Kotka, Tampere and Imatra. The team observed 100 polling stations across the country identifying some issues concerning independent voting, which will form part of the report issued in May.
However, as part of the deployment, the team has also been looking at external challenges to Finland’s elections, specifically with online attacks which seem to originate from Russia in the form of so-called DDoS attacks (Distributed Denial of Service), which were aimed at parts of the democratic infrastructure of Finland, namely the Ministry of Justice’s website – the body responsible for overseeing and legislating for Finnish elections.
Commenting, Director of Democracy Volunteers, Dr John Ault, said:
‘Western democracies have to be increasingly vigilant concerning bad actors outside of their control. Only by robustly defending elections, ensuring that they have the best systems in place to deal with these external forces, usually in the form of Russia, can they continue to prosper.’
‘Electoral interference was something I was talking to voters about today in Imatra, a town on the border with Russia, and local people responded in the way that voters in a democracy should, they turned out in large numbers to vote for their preferred choice of candidate, no fanfare, no fury, just quietly delivering their part of the democratic process.’
‘Our team, as always, have given their time, their energies and their knowledge to assess the democratic process in Finland, and I’d like to extend my thanks to them for all their hard work and the welcome we have received from the electoral authorities in Finland and the staff in polling stations across the country.’
You can learn more about Democracy Volunteers in Finland by listening to the latest podcast on Spotify, Apple or YouTube.
