Online voting and turnout in the 2019 European Parliamentary elections

I am grateful to Estonia for publishing detailed turnout statistics online on its official government elections website, in Estonian and English.

The 2019 European Parliament elections have completed. Estonia was the only country to offer online voting. There were seven days of online voting available during the advance voting period in Estonia, from May 16 to May 22 inclusive.

The turnout (percentage of eligible voters) for online voting was 17.6%.

Over 80% of eligible Estonian voters chose not to vote online.

The total turnout was 37.6%.

The majority of Estonian voters chose to vote on paper.

Estonian turnout increased 1.1%. But provisional overall European turnout increased over 8%.

Estonian turnout was 37.6%. But provisional overall European turnout was 50.97%.

Estonia’s neighbour Finland doesn’t vote online. Provisional turnout in Finland was 40.7%.

Estonia’s neighbour Lithuania doesn’t vote online. Provisional turnout in Lithuania was 53.08%.

In fact, with no other country in this election permitting online voting, turnout was higher in 19 of the 27 other countries that voted.

Estonia had lower turnout than 19 of the 27 other countries, lower turnout than overall in Europe, and a lower increase in turnout than overall in Europe.

Online voting doesn’t put Estonia at the top of the pack for turnout. In fact Estonia was in the bottom third of nations for turnout in the 2019 European Parliamentary elections.

So I don’t know how one could continue to assert that online voting is any kind of solution to increasing turnout.

UPDATE 2019-06-01: I have made a Google Docs spreadsheet of the European Parliamentary elections turnout data, if you want to look at the numbers yourself. Note that this shows total turnout; as indicated above Estonia votes online and on paper, with the majority voting on paper. END UPDATE

Data sources: