H. E. Mr. Mait Martinson:

I thank the committee for inviting me to speak today on the issue of voting rights. Estonian citizens who have attained 18 years of age by election day have the right to vote. It does not matter whether they stay in Estonia or abroad. The law describes that Estonian citizens permanently residing or temporarily staying abroad have the right to vote abroad. As described by my good colleague, the Ambassador of Spain, earlier there are also historical reasons for such an approach in Estonia, dating back to the 1940s and earlier.

As I understand it, the interest of the committee above all probably relates to the different voting methods and what is used by Estonia to grant the right. Voting methods used in Estonia include advance voting, voting aboard, voting on ships, voting on election day and Internet voting, i-voting or e-voting.

Voting abroad for national elections, European Parliament elections and referendums is organised in foreign countries through Estonian foreign missions. This applies mostly to traditional methods of voting, that is, voting by post, which must take place 30 days before election day and in person at foreign missions. A foreign mission must allow voting acclamation on at least two days in the period between ten and 15 days before election day. One of these days must be a business day and the second must be a holiday, be it Saturday, Sunday or a national holiday in the host country. Of course, if a person stays in a foreign country he can still apply to use electronic voting or i-voting over the Internet.

I suppose with the passing of time the traditional methods, by which I mean voting by post or at the embassy, do not differ so much and I would rather jump quickly and straight to so-called i-voting. I-voting was first introduced in the local elections in Estonia 2005. At that time more than 9,000 voters cast a ballot via the Internet, corresponding to approximately 2% of all participating voters. Up to now i-voting with binding results has been carried out six times, most recently in the local elections in October 2013. The number of participating i-voters has grown steadily, reaching more than 140,000 voters in the last national elections, which took place in 2011. This number corresponds to approximately 24% of participating voters or 15% of the general electorate.

How is it done? The easiest way to explain it is to say that in order to participate in i-voting a person must have a national identification card, such as this card I have before me. It has an electronic chip with all the relevant data. The person must be identified using the card reader. There is new equipment to read the built-in systems in the card. It is a travel document within the European Union as well. If a person applies for the card, he is presented with two secret codes.