Signed, Sealed, and Delivered with Trust: Non-Resident Citizens’ Experiences of Newly Adopted Postal Voting

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has made it clear that the traditional “booth, ballot, and pen” model of voting, based on a specific location and physical presence, may not be feasible during a health crisis. This situation has highlighted the need to assess whether existing national electoral legislation includes enough instruments to ensure citizens’ safety during voting procedures, even under the conditions of a global pandemic. Such instruments, often grouped under the umbrella of voter facilitation or convenience voting, range from voting in advance and various forms of absentee voting (postal, online, and proxy voting) to assisted voting and voting at home and in hospitals and other healthcare institutions. While most democracies have implemented at least some form of voter facilitation, substantial cross-country differences still exist. In the push to develop pandemic-sustainable elections in different institutional and political contexts, variation in voter facilitation makes it possible to learn from country-specific experiences. As accessibility and inclusiveness are critical components of elections for ensuring political legitimacy and accountability these lessons are of utmost importance.In this study, we focus on Finland, where the Parliament decided in March 2021 to postpone for two months the municipal elections that were originally scheduled to be held on April 18. Although the decision was mostly justified by the sudden and dramatic daily increase in new COVID-19 infections, the inability to guarantee the opportunity to vote for those in quarantine was included among the likely risks. The failure to organize health-safe voting procedures to accommodate the original schedule emphasizes a certain paradox in the Finnish electoral legislation: caution in introducing new facilitation instruments has led to lower levels of preparedness and flexibility in crisis situations. Although a forerunner in implementing extensive advance voting opportunities, Finland has only recently introduced postal voting, which is restricted to voters living abroad. Hence, we ask: what can be learned from this form of convenience voting if expanded to all voters to enhance the sustainability of elections?Our analyses are based on a survey conducted among non-resident voters (n = 2,100) after the 2019 parliamentary elections in which postal voting from abroad was allowed for the first time. Our results show that whereas trust in the integrity of postal voting is quite high, various efforts needed from individual voters substantially increase the costs of postal voting. Postal operations also raise concerns. Furthermore, voters felt that requiring two witnesses made postal voting cumbersome, an issue that needs to be resolved, particularly if applying postal voting in the context of a pandemic. The Finnish case constitutes a concrete example of a situation in which voter facilitation targeted to a particular segment of society may become a testbed for electoral engineering that will improve voting opportunities for everyone.

With pulling ties, electoral participation flies: factors mobilising turnout among non-resident Finnish voters

“…Voters also have to rely on the efficiency of the post to deliver the ballots in time. This is echoed by recent findings suggesting that trust acts as a moderator between distance to the polling station and non-resident Finns' probability of postal voting (Nemčok and Peltoniemi 2021;Wass et al 2021;Weide 2021).…”

“…Non-resident Finnish citizens have been able to vote from abroad since the 1970s, but their turnout has remained low, fluctuating around ten percent. Over the last two decades, Finnish governments have been searching for solutions to better engage the ever-increasing electorate abroad (Wass et al 2021). Improving voting opportunities for Finns living abroad was highlighted in the government policy programmes for non-resident Finns for 2006-2011 and 2012-2016, in which the introduction of postal voting was presented as a possible way to increase turnout.…”

“…Collyer 2013;Himmelroos and Peltoniemi 2021;Lafleur 2011;Stutzer and Slotwinski 2021;Turcu and Urbatsch 2020;Wellman 2021), policy issues related to electoral incentives (e.g. Nemčok and Peltoniemi 2021;Wass, Peltoniemi, Weide, and Nemčok, 2021;Østergaard-Nielsen and Ciornei 2019) and allowing emigrants to elect special emigrant representatives (e.g. Burgess and Tyburski 2020;Palop-García, 2018;Peltoniemi 2016b; Umpierrez de Reguero and Dandoy 2021).…”

Political Parties Abroad. A New Arena for Electoral Politics

“…The country of birth and the length of residency in the host country also play a role (Peltoniemi, 2018;Szulecki et al, 2021): studies point to a decline in participation with length of residence abroad (Belchior et al, 2018;Waldinger, 2012). Studies show that interest in home country politics as well as previous political experience in the home country increases the likelihood of voting (Lafleur & Chelius, 2011;McCann et al, 2019;McIlwaine & Bermudez, 2015;Peltoniemi, 2018), yet higher cost of voting (distance to polling station (Peltoniemi, 2018), and higher perceived cost of voting, decrease the probability to vote & Bermudez, 2015;Wass et al, 2021), confirming findings at the aggregate level. Participation in homeland elections is also driven by a sense of duty, patriotism, homesickness, and a desire to reproduce a social milieu abroad (Boccagni, 2011;Boccagni & Ramirez, 2013;Knott, 2017;McCann et al, 2019).…”