Master the election lingo!

Constituency association

You don’t necessarily need a party to be a candidate in the elections. You can be an independent candidate by getting enough supporters. When you do this, the election legislation referes to you and your supports as a constituency association. In practice it is rather difficult to get a MP seat as an independent candidate due to the proportional method in which the result is determined. See, Electoral alliance.

Online voting

In some cases, such as in trade union elections, you can cast your vote via your computer online without election officials watching over you. Online voting is not available in Finland in any of the official elections. Supprisingly online voting does not seem to increase the amount of active voters. For example in Estonia the polling percentage in the parliamentary elections was 63 when in Finland the percentage is usually around 70 %.

Electoral alliance

Two parties can join in an alliance where their votes will be counted together as if they were one party. In proportional representation it might be better for the smaller parties to create alliances to improve their odds of getting their candidates elected. The downside of an alliance is that you cannot say whether your vote helped your favorite party or some other party in the alliance.

Electoral district

Geographical area determined in the electoral law, which is used in the parliamentary elections. The districts help ensure that the parliament is regionally representative and that the elected MPs are familiar with all regions.

Learn more: https://vaalit.fi/en/parliamentary-elections https://www.vaalirahoitusvalvonta.fi/en/index.html https://puoluerekisteri.fi/

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