Advance votes in the regional elections being counted on election day in Vantaa on 13 April 2025. LEHTIKUVA
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More than 120,000 votes were disqualified in Finland’s recent municipal and regional elections, with officials pointing to voter confusion and procedural mistakes as the likely cause.
Preliminary figures show that 83,700 votes were rejected in the regional elections and 41,700 in the municipal contests. Both figures represent a sharp rise from previous years. In the 2022 regional elections, the number of invalid ballots was just over 7,100. In the 2021 municipal elections, 11,500 votes were disqualified.
According to Arto Jääskeläinen, the election director at the Ministry of Justice, there is no single explanation for the spike. “It is difficult to blame the system alone,” he said. Jääskeläinen noted that the occurrence of two elections simultaneously may have contributed to the problem.
In Helsinki, where only municipal elections took place, the rejection rate was just 0.7 percent. By contrast, in areas where voters received two ballots—one for the municipality and one for the regional council—the invalidation rate in regional elections rose to 4.1 percent. The corresponding rate for municipal votes was 1.7 percent.
The disparity has raised questions about whether some voters chose to abstain from the regional vote while still participating in the municipal one. Jääskeläinen cited a historical parallel in 1996, when voters simultaneously cast ballots in municipal and European Parliament elections. That year, the rejection rate was 1.4 percent for the municipal vote and 4.9 percent for the European contest.
In the Pirkanmaa welfare region, more than 8,900 regional votes were declared invalid, compared to just 861 in 2022. In North Ostrobothnia, over 6,400 were rejected, up from 541. For the municipal vote, Tampere recorded the highest number of invalid ballots at nearly 2,200, a significant increase from 415 in 2021. Oulu followed with over 1,600 rejections, up from 367.
The Ministry of Justice believes a range of common errors contributed. Some ballots were left blank. Others were marked with drawings or messages rather than candidate numbers. Jääskeläinen said that some voters had used the opportunity to intentionally spoil their ballots. “They want to make a point with their rejection,” he said.
Another error involved voters mixing up candidate numbers. For example, a number meant for a regional candidate may have been written on a municipal ballot or vice versa. While the difference between handwritten numbers like 1 and 7 was not a frequent issue, some handwriting was illegible.
In Vantaa, a slower, staggered ballot system was trialled to reduce confusion. The city still recorded invalidation rates in line with national averages, suggesting the approach did not significantly affect voter accuracy.
Despite the rise in errors, the Ministry of Justice has no plans to introduce electronic voting. “I don’t believe it would reduce mistakes,” Jääskeläinen said. “People also make errors with clicking and typing. We are not moving towards electronic voting.”
He added that mistakes occur in all voting systems, and confidence in paper ballots remains high. The election board is waiting for final recounts before drawing any procedural conclusions.
The Ministry has previously conducted a study on the impact of combining elections and found a recurring pattern of increased errors. The current figures reinforce that finding, with clear signs that double ballots increase the chance of mistakes and abstention from one of the votes.
HT
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Source: www.helsinkitimes.fi
