The reason that crossed out and rewritten numbers on the ballot are accepted in Finland can be found in an old decision of the Supreme Administrative Court.
Information about the possibility to cross out and rewrite the ballot number caused a stir on social media.
Director of Elections Arto Jääskeläinen the Ministry of Justice said on Monday In the HS news, that if there is a mistake in the voting booth, it is possible to cross out the missed number and write a new, complete version of the number next to it. However, this happens at the voter's own risk and requires two things: the crossing out is done neatly and the new number is written so clearly that it can be accepted.
People on social media wondered if crossing out and rewriting doesn't make it possible to falsify votes. How can you know that the new number has not been added to the ballot afterwards by someone else?
Fear of voices falsification is pointless in this case, reassures election leader Jääskeläinen.
He reminds that no vote counter can change the number. This is because no one checks the ballots alone in Finnish elections.
“The voter is not alone in any cell or bunker. There are a lot of other tellers around all the time. There are calculators nearby within sight, next to the scroll. You can't write anything on the ticket, the tellers don't even have a pen. So when the ticket is taken from the envelope, there is no possibility to mark the number as the second one.”
Arto Jääskeläinen, director of elections at the Ministry of Justice's democracy and public rights department.
Reason you can find out why in Finland ballots where the number is first blacked out and then a new one is written next to it are accepted in the old decision of the Supreme Administrative Court.
The solution that the ministry and the election commissions rely on is from 1983. The word for that solution is law.
According to the decision at the time, the ballot could not be considered invalid, even if the voter crossed out the number he had entered. This was due to the fact that the new number on the ballot showed which candidate the voter meant.
“Everyone follows this solution. The decision is old, but it has been done according to this,” says Jääskeläinen.
According to him, the Court of Justice has set out to find the intention of the voter in its decision: what he ultimately wanted.
“The voter could very well have misremembered. He drew a number on the ticket, but still checked the list of candidates and noticed that it was not the right number. Then he crossed out the incorrect one and marked the correct one.”
Jääskeläinen according to the cases where the ticket contains both a lost vote and a new company are rare in elections.
He reminds again very emphatically that the corre
ct way in cases of fraud is to apply for a new ballot from the election official. This is what the official instructions say. This instruction can also be found in the voting booths.
“But if someone thinks it's more convenient to do it this way [yliviivaamalla ja uudelleen kirjoittamalla], then it is possible. The KHO has started from the idea of trying to find out the will of the voter from that ballot as well.”
Discourse about the possible falsification of votes has emerged in recent years. According to Jääskeläinen, since the time after the 2020 US presidential election, a certain group of people has been looking for fraud in the Finnish elections as well.
“We can't do anything about this philosophy if they think so. We can tell you how the voting takes place and what the journey of the ballot is. In particular, we can tell you what happens to the ticket when it is taken out of the envelope and the votes begin to be counted.”
Among other things, this is what the ballots that were rejected in the first round of the presidential election looked like.
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