University of Helsinki
The FACE survey data suggests that adoption of postal voting among Finnish citizens residing abroad is dependent on two different type of factors: On the one hand, voting via post helps to overcome distance between a voter’s residency and the nearest polling station organized by a diplomatic mission (mostly an embassy or a consulate). On the other hand, this way of voting also requires enough trust that the postal service and designated state office will successfully deliver one’s vote all the way to the ballot box, as the result cannot be effectively verified without violating the ballot secrecy. Johanna Peltoniemi and Miroslav Nemčok published a short news article about this topic in Suomen Silta 2/2020, page 7: https://www.lukusali.fi/?p=Suomen%20Silta&i=02da358a-941a-11ea-aeee-00155d64030a.
We now invite Finnish citizens abroad to contribute to the research by their thoughts and personal experiences of postal voting. What makes you trust or distrust the Finnish postal voting system? If you have voted, or tried to vote, through postal voting, how did it go? Contact us at votingabroad@helsinki.fi if you’d like to participate!