It has been established that 24 breaches were committed in the Reform Party internal elections in Viljandi County, said MP Vaino Linde who heads the work group investigating vote rigging in the ruling party's recent internal polls.
Reform Party work group detects 24 cases of vote rigging in Viljandi County
10th June 2013, 17:54
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According to Linde, the work group believes that the number of breaches detected in Viljandi County is final, spokespeople for the parly told BNS on Monday.
"It is not suspected that breaches took place in more regions than the West-Viru, Voru and Viljandi counties, where the breaches were identified. The work group will now start to put together a final report to be presented to the party's extended council that will gather in Tallinn this Saturday," Linde said.
In the three counties 71 breaches were identified. All the rigged votes given in West-Viru County and some of the Voru County fraudulent votes went to MEP Kristiina Ojuland, the work group has established. According to the figures, 2.1 percent of the votes given for the present governing board of the Reform Party were manipulated. In all 1,494 votes were cast in the Reform Party internal voting.
Linde said the persons connected with the breaches "have no place in the Reform Party in the future."
In addition to the final report the panel intends to make its proposals to the extended board on how internal voting should be handled in the future. "Definitely the aim to involve as many members of the party as possible in decision making while ensuring the security of polling via electronic channels must remain essential. After all, we detected these breaches namely because there's a log of everything that takes place in electronic channels, with paper ballots it would have been almost impossible," said Linde.
The in-party investigation in Reform exposed vote-rigging in three counties in internal voting in conjunction with the party convention held on May 25. Media have reported that the common scheme of vote manipulation consisted of the creation of online accounts for inactive elderly members of the party by or with the knowledge of Reform's regional development managers and casting of votes from those accounts in the polls that enabled identification by e-mail address or via Facebook account.