Election Complaint to the National Electoral Committee
We have received information that the State Electoral Office (RVT) has made a special offer to selected political parties to participate in the auditing of the municipal elections’ electronic voting system with their own specialized auditors. On 5.09.2025, Kati-Ambo Vaher (kati.ambo-vaher@valimised.ee) sent a letter titled “Invitation to Audit the Electronic Voting System”, in which she invited parties to nominate such auditors and set forth technical and organizational requirements for them.
Such an invitation addressed exclusively to political parties is unjustified, because electoral alliances – including Plaan B alliances in various municipalities (hereinafter: Plaan B) – are equally interested in the accuracy of the election results. Restricting this proposal only to political parties infringes the rights of Plaan B, since although Plaan B may nominate its candidates to local election committees under § 23 of the Local Government Council Election Act (KOVVS), no such option has been provided to ensure the correctness of electronic voting results. Likewise, under § 28 of KOVVS, both electoral alliances and political parties are permitted to review voter lists to verify that no fictitious persons are registered or that votes have not been falsely attributed to those who did not actually vote. Therefore, limiting RVT’s special offer only to political parties is unjustified by analogy and cannot be based on the purpose of the election laws or the constitutional principles of elections.
Moreover, electronic voting is the most contested form of voting, whose integrity and reliability have been questioned by both domestic and international election observers. Ensuring its correctness is therefore of particular importance for Plaan B. If the results of electronic voting are not accurate, Plaan B could lose seats in municipal councils, which is unacceptable to us and contrary to the election laws.
Since the RVT’s statement of 5.09.2025 violates Plaan B’s right to verify the correctness of the election results on its own and creates unjustified privileges for political parties compared to electoral alliances and the public (including election observers), while also imposing restrictions on who may verify the correctness of the election results, Plaan B requests that the proposed auditing procedure by RVT be declared unlawful.
The assurance of election result accuracy cannot be the exclusive domain of auditors or party-appointed auditors – every representative of the public must be able to verify it.
If, in the case of electronic voting, Plaan B’s representatives, candidates, and members are not adequately guaranteed the opportunity to verify the correctness of results, then we request that, in order to safeguard electoral peace, the National Electoral Committee abolish electronic voting altogether in municipal elections and restrict voting to traditional paper ballots in polling stations.
— Andro Roos, Chairman of PLAAN B
