Estonian Reform Party task force: Only Ojuland gave vote-rigging orders

Photo: PP

A work group formed by Estonia's Reform Party to look into suspected violations in last month's internal leadership elections on Saturday presented to the party's policy-making council its report from which it appears that vote-rigging was ordered only by MEP Kristiina Ojuland or her staff.

"The Reform Party work group established that 71 violations in all were committed in the internal election. Connected with the violations were five persons who either stole the votes of those 71 members or were otherwise involved. Besides the established violations no more violations are suspected," said MP Vaino Linde who chaired the investigative group.

In his words, according to the explanations given to the work group all the rigged votes in West-Viru County and some of the Voru County fraudulent votes went to Ojuland who was expelled from the party on June 5. The development director for Viljandi County explained that he voted randomly, not for concrete candidates. All told, 1,494 votes were cast in the party's internal election.

According to Linde, the probe confirmed that the development director of the party's West-Viru chapter, Taimi Samblik, manipulated the vote at Ojuland's behest, development director for Voru County Elleri-Kristel Kelp did it at the recommendation of Anu Kikas, a member of Ojuland's staff, and Ott Kukk, development director for Viljandi County, rigged the vote of his own accord.

In addition to the report, the work group made suggestions about 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," Linde said.

So as to exclude the possibility of vote rigging, the panel proposed that only the ID card and mobile ID be used for identification in online voting in future internal elections. "It's essential to note that already in the 2013 internal election 54.1 percent of the votes cast electronically were given by using ID cards and mobile ID," Linde said.