Monday marks start of local election week
At 9 a.m. on Monday, electronic voting for the local government elections begins. At noon, polling stations in local municipality centers and Tallinn districts will be opened, voting in all polling stations runs from Friday to Saturday. Online voting is available throughout the week.
E-voting will begin at 9 a.m. on Monday and will be open until 8 p.m. on Saturday. A voting application must be downloaded from valimised.ee - it will be made available shortly prior to voting opening. In addition, voters need a computer, an internet connection, an ID-card and an ID-card reader.
Smart-ID is not available for these elections. It is also not possible to vote with a smart device, but voters can use their phones to check if their e-vote has reached the central election server. For this purpose, an application called "EH kontrollrakendus" must be downloaded from the Google Play Store or App Store.
State election service head Arne Koitmäe said if voters feel like their privacy is not completely ensured via online voting, they have the option of changing their vote until Saturday evening.
"If a voter has participated in the elections both electronically and with a ballot, only the vote cast at a polling station will count. From this year, voters can also change their e-vote by casting a ballot at a polling station on Sunday," Koitmäe added.
Polling stations will be available from Monday to Thursday in local municipality centers, cities and Tallinn districts. Each center will open at least one station and everyone can cast a vote regardless of their registered place of residence.
"For example, a student from Saaremaa, currently studying at the University of Tartu, can go to a polling station in Tartu at the start of the week and vote," Koitmäe said. Information about polling stations is available at jsk.valimised.ee.
From Friday to Sunday, all 448 polling stations across Estonia will be opened. Voters can vote in any polling station in their city or municipality. An exception is the Peipsiääre municipality in Tartu County, which has four electoral districts - each voter must vote in their district.
"From this election forward, we are using an electronic list of voters instead of using a list on paper. This means voters are no longer tied to a certain polling station and can vote in any polling station in their electoral district," Koitmäe said.
If voters have a health condition or cannot go to a polling station for other reasons (such as being a COVID-19 close contact), they can apply to vote at home. An application must be presented to the local municipality government, which can already be done. A verbal application can be done via phone on Friday and Saturday from noon to 8 p.m. and from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Sunday.
This year there are 10,025 candidates. You can find candidates running in your district here. There are 79 local governments in Estonia, which are divided into 64 rural municipalities and 15 cities.
For more ERR News coverage on local elections, see here. ERR News has also put together a FAQ for the local government elections, available here.
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Editor: Kristjan Kallaste