ANDRES AULE JA JAAK VALGE ⟩ An external assessment of e-elections is in the interest of all of Estonia

Riigikogu building. Photo: Konstantin Sednev / Postimees

• With e-elections, the results can be questioned even if there are no signs of fraud.
• The electronic voting system still raises questions.
• The coalition did not allow an assessment request to be submitted through the Riigikogu.

A special mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) is coming to Estonia in February with the aim of forming a legal assessment of the Estonian e-election system along with recommendations, Andres Aule, a member of the board of the Estonian Nationalists and Conservatives (ERK) party, and Jaak Valge, a member of the Riigikogu (ERK), write.

Elections are said to be a celebration of democracy. However, the concept of democracy itself has become vague and of poor quality in recent decades, and the credibility of elected bodies has declined.

Citizens with a nationalist mindset tie democracy more clearly to the choice of citizens and see the decline in the sovereignty of states as the reason for the decline in the quality of democracy. Elections do take place, but they do not have a significant impact. Powerful decision-making people or groups of people may be located far away and not care about the place where their decisions actually have an impact. This is partly inevitable because in the conditions of globalization, the power of the state is territorially limited, but the processes that the state must manage, such as cultural and monetary policy, and the problems that the state must solve, such as security and environmental problems, are more or less, or rather increasingly, global.

But even citizens with a left-wing globalist stance and opinion leaders who do not care much about state sovereignty have observed a decline in the quality of freedoms and democracy namely in recent years. In their understanding, this foremost means a decrease in respect for various minorities and migrants and a weakening of the rule of law. If you click on the website of the left-wing globalist think tank Freedom House, you can see a clear trend that the number of countries where the rights or benefits defined as freedoms by the left-wing globalists have decreased in recent years is many times higher than the number of those where they have increased.

However, both left-wing globalists and nationalists generally agree that politics and democracy as a whole are also being damaged by the commercialization of politicians and their focus on the media, as well as constant corruption scandals that increasingly call into question the perception of politicians as the elite of society. Political careers are made by people whose strengths may not be a strong vision, but eloquence or attractive appearance.

A new situation

A new situation has emerged with the widespread use of social media. Politicians can now reach voters directly, without the filtering mediation of the «old media», and this allows for the irresponsible circulation of even more inaccurate or exaggerated information than before, making the election campaign vulnerable to external interference.

In these circumstances, to which we should add the fact that the confrontation between the left-wing globalist and nationalist trends is sharper than ever before, elections that are based on rules, verifiable and ultimately earn the trust of citizens are more crucial than ever before, because both the risk that the will of the voters will be manipulated during the elections as well as the risk that politicians who lose the elections will not accept the election results and can also insinuate to citizens that there has been election fraud have increased. Whether with reason or not. Unfortunately, the elections held in Europe over the past six months have not been free from these problems.

It seems that most citizens have by now come to terms with the results of the Moldovan referendum and presidential elections in October and November 2024, although during the election campaign, the opposing sides accused each other of blatant violations, such as influencing voters with Russian money, buying votes and falsifying voting results.

The elections in Georgia in October 2024 were a different story, with serious controversy and international criticism. The opposition accused the government of electoral fraud and announced that it would not participate in the new parliament composition. Large-scale demonstrations kicked off because a large part of the citizens did not recognize the legitimacy of the Georgian parliament and government formed after the parliamentary elections, as well as the president appointed. The incumbent president refused to step down and is demanding new elections. The country is in a constitutional crisis.

In Romania, however, the Constitutional Court annulled the first round of the 2024 presidential elections because the country was the target of «aggressive hybrid attacks» during the election period. One candidate, who received a surprising number of votes, was said to have been helped by a Kremlin-backed TikTok campaign. However, the accusation of Kremlin support was later dropped. Both candidates condemned the Constitutional Court’s decision. The incumbent president’s term ended on December 21. Romania is facing a government vacuum and an uncertain political situation.

E-elections in particular arouse distrust

International organizations are understandably very concerned about this situation. However, it is particularly e-elections, which are conducted using a method that makes it impossible for an ordinary person to verify their results, even with the best of intentions, that can arouse speculation and distrust. In other words, a method like the one in Estonia. This allows the election results to be questioned even if there are no clear signs of fraud.

Here, in addition to the connections concerning democracy, there is also a connection with national defense. Estonia is in many ways a border state and therefore on the potential front line of events. We live in a place where the Russian world, русский мир, adjoins Europe. This front line is not limited to the physical state border, but also includes the ideological and information technology borders.

Fragments of the Kremlin's ideology can reach our information space through various channels and germinate here in various forms – even in unexpected places, including among Estonians. Our information technology systems of national importance are certainly better protected from anti-Estonian influence than the mindsets of the people of Estonia, but it is not realistic to promise a 100 percent security guarantee. Part of the security of our technical systems is also related to the security of our own mindset. How protected Estonia's technical systems are or are not in general is shown, for example, by how well we have been able and will be able to protect our underwater electricity and communication cables in the future.

Above, we discussed, among other things, influencing election results through social media or «aggressive hybrid attacks». If this is considered possible in Romania, it can also be considered possible in Estonia.

It is in Estonia's interest that such suspicions or accusations do not arise at critical moments, because crises that may develop in connection with the election results – whether it be allegations of election influence or manipulation of the Estonian e-voting system, or the need to refute such allegations at the national level – could make us vulnerable in real time when defending our country. And provide pretexts with which to propagandistically justify attacks against Estonia in any form in international information environments.

The emergence of doubts

The possibilities for such suspicions or accusations to arise undoubtedly exist. On April 23, 2023, pollster Norstat conducted a public opinion poll on electronic voting in Estonia. Based on the results, more than 38 percent of respondents did not consider e-voting in Estonia to be reliable, while 39.7 percent of respondents believed that there had been partial fraud.

The explanatory memorandum to the draft amendment to the electoral laws (344 SE) adopted in spring 2024 states, under Figure 1, «Voter trust in e-elections 2005–2023», with reference to a study by the Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies at the University of Tartu, that «after the 2023 Riigikogu elections, 59.5 percent of people eligible to vote trusted e-elections» and that in recent years, average trust in e-elections has fallen across all age groups. Such trust indicators in one of the main factors directly affecting the organization of the state and the functioning of democracy may threaten the perceived legitimacy of election results and thus the security of society as a separate factor, even if there were no other problems in the electoral system.

Estonia’s electronic voting system still raises questions, the resolution of which is in Estonia's interests. It also seems that the competent institutions in Estonia have not yet assessed the e-election system as a whole. Chief Justice Villu Kõve has noted that due to legal nuances, it is «essentially almost impossible to reach a comprehensive assessment of the constitutionality of the electronic voting regulation within the framework of a specific normative review».

With this in mind, one of the signatories, Jaak Valge, had the idea some time ago to ask the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe, an advisory body on democracy and the rule of law, for an opinion on these issues. At the time, Jaak Valge was a member of the parliamentary group of the Estonian Conservative People’s Party (EKRE) and the request for an opinion, which summarizes six issues that have remained open in connection with the Estonian e-elections so far, was prepared at the request of this group by the other signatory, Andres Aule. The request asks for an opinion on the security and legality of the Estonian e-elections as a whole.

However, this request for an opinion initially simply stalled in the EKRE group, because only a country’s constitutional institutions, such as the parliament, government or head of state, can address the Venice Commission, but the forces currently leading Estonia did not seem to want to ask for an international assessment on this issue. In September, however, a discussion arose as to whether the Riigikogu could address the Venice Commission. However, this discussion halted or was stopped largely for formal reasons, when Alar Laneman, who had left EKRE for the Reform Party in the meantime, removed his signature from the submitted draft.

Assuming that the Riigikogu plenary would not pass this appeal anyway, we in the Estonian Nationalists and Conservatives (ERK) party, which is also part of the opposition in the Riigikogu, had already previously considered the possibility of requesting an opinion on the Estonian e-elections through the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and met with OSCE representatives in Warsaw on August 26.

Special mission to Estonia

The OSCE informed us of its agreement to accept a request for an opinion submitted by the deputy speaker of the Riigikogu, in this case Arvo Aller (EKRE), as a representative of the opposition. When the submission of the request through the Riigikogu failed, we announced this possibility and proposed an amended text of the request for an opinion, which Aller also used, and as a result, an OSCE special mission is now coming to Estonia in February with the aim of formulating a legal assessment of the Estonian e-election system along with recommendations.

It would take too long to dwell on the six contradictions described in the request for an opinion in this piece of writing, and moreover, one of the contradictions described in the appeal was partially, but in our opinion not completely, resolved after Estonia's electoral laws were amended in the spring of 2024. However, we would like to dwell on one issue, which is referred to in a footnote in the request for an opinion.

The license information for the source code of the Estonian electronic voting system software shows that this software was created by the private sector company Cybernetica AS in the years 2004-2013 and 2016-2020. From the available materials and protocols, it appears that this company has developed the Estonian e-voting software from the beginning and also participated in the development of the requirements or even the procurement conditions for the system.

However, the implementation guidelines of the Council of Europe's recommendation on e-voting standards state: «Member states should take appropriate measures to avoid circumstances where the election is unduly dependent on vendors.» As is well known, Estonia is small and there are few local experts in some more complex fields, which is why it may happen that such a field may remain in the hands of a narrow faction for decades, but in such a situation an impartial international assessment would be all the more useful.

The perceived need to protect the e-election system from suspicion or accusations may also arise from an imagological perspective, especially if the electronic voting system is seen not simply as an instrument that simplifies state organization, but also as an Estonian success story or a political tool for mobilizing the citizenry (or one's own electorate).

For example, the Riigikogu constitutional committee also discussed the possibility of submitting the same request for an opinion to the Venice Commission through the Riigikogu at its sitting on Sept. 10, 2024. Among other things, the minutes of this sitting show the dissatisfaction of one Social Democratic Party MP, a member of the governing coalition, with «why the text of the address was drafted in such a one-sided manner, only outlining arguments why e-elections are bad and what the problems are» and asking «how an address that only criticizes e-elections can be in the interests of both camps».

Minimizing problems

These statements (and there are more like these in the minutes) reflect the recognition that there are camps in Estonia on the issue of e-elections, and one camp – probably encompassing the entire government coalition – believes that we should receive the most favorable opinion possible regarding our e-elections at the international level and, to that end, soften the description of possible problems with a positive counterweight, perhaps even downplaying these problems in this way.

To the best of our knowledge, this request for an opinion does not contain false statements regarding any of the issues described. The purpose of submitting a request for an opinion to the OSCE was not to fish for praise on what is going well with e-elections in Estonia, but to seek greater clarity and the assessment of international experts on issues where things may not be going so well. Clarity on these issues is necessary and beneficial for all of Estonia.

The temptation to defend an already established system through strategic communication that eliminates any doubts, purely to avoid reputational damage, would be a very dangerous direction in an issue so important from the point of view of state organization and security. It would be better if such a need or temptation did not arise at all.

The request for an opinion ends with the question: «Is the continued use of the Estonian online voting system justified and secure even if the contradictions described above have not been appropriately resolved?»

The OSCE special mission to Estonia in February will consist of experts whose credibility and impartiality there is no reason to doubt. Regardless of whether their response to this question will be complimentary or critical, it will be important and useful for Estonia – either as confirmation that we have acted correctly or as guidance on what we should do better so that our electoral system, and thus our democracy, is reliable, resilient to attack and built on solid foundations in these turbulent and troubled times.