Supreme Court dismisses Roy Strider election complaint
The Constitutional Review Chamber of the Supreme Court of Estonia on Thursday dismissed a complaint submitted by Roy Strider, a candidate in the 2019 Riigikogu election, according to which he sought the annulment of the election results of the Estonian Embassy in Brussels and called for a new election to be held there.
According to Estonia's top court, the legal violation that took place in the organisation of voting in Brussels did not affect the election result.
Roy Strider, who ran for election to the Riigikogu on the list of the Social Democratic Party (SDE), was legally named Raul Sillaste until 8 February. The consolidated list of candidates of Estonia's first electoral district distributed at the polls in Brussels on 17 February mistakenly featured Strider's previous name. After the mistake was discovered, a corrected candidate list was printed at the embassy in which the name Raul Sillaste was replaced with Roy Strider. By the time the new list was issued, two people had already cast their votes at the embassy.
The National Electoral Committee satisfied Strider's complaint and declared the candidate list not being updated to be unlawful. The committee dismissed, however, the complainant's request for the votes that had been cast on the basis of the incorrect list to be annulled.
The Constitutional Review Chamber of the Supreme Court found that the violation that took place at the Estonian Embassy in Brussels did not have a significant impact on voting results, as the election results remained unchanged. Even the addition of two votes to the overall number of votes cast in favour of the complainant would not have guaranteed them a seat in the Riigikogu, nor would it have earned them a spot as an alternate member.
MPs are to be registered and the election results declared after the deadline for the submission of complaints to the National Electoral Committee and the Supreme Court has passed, or once final decisions have been made regarding all complainants.
Editor: Aili Vahtla