Online voting opened at 9 a.m. on Monday (October 13) and ended at 8 p.m. on Saturday (October 18).

In total, 272,206 ballots were submitted electronically, according to data from the State Electoral Office. This is less than the number submitted at the last election in 2021, when 273,620 e-votes were cast.

The final number is expected to fall a little as duplicated votes cast online and on paper will be removed from the total.

Election service chief Arne Koitmäe said, from a technical perspective, e-voting went smoothly.

"No errors occurred during the process. Voter activity was also quite high. Typically, most people vote in the mornings and again after returning home from work. Over 60 percent of votes have now been cast electronically," he said.

The e-voting results are expected to be released at around 10 p.m. A recount will take place on Monday (October 20).

You can watch the count in the Riigikogu from 7 p.m. HERE or on the Riigikogu's website HERE.

Proceedings will take place alternatively in Estonian and English. ERR News also outlines the process below.

Counting e-votes

The e-vote count will take place in the Riigikogu's conference hall, and the electronic vote processing and counting procedures will be carried out by the State Electoral Office. These procedures will be monitored by CISA-certified auditors (FocusIT) and observers. The votes will be unsealed by the National Electoral Committee.

The count will begin at 7 p.m. with an introduction, during which the hardware and process being used will be presented.

Next, the integrity of the data will be verified: it will be ensured that the data (e-votes) are readable, processable, and properly formatted.

The electronic ballot box's identification number will be verified. This ensures that no one has replaced the ballot box after the end of e-voting, or attempted to add or remove any votes. Any change in the data — even a space — alters the identification number, and manipulation would be immediately apparent.

It will be confirmed that all votes in the electronic ballot box are encrypted with the encryption key created by the State Electoral Office on September 29, 2025.

It will be confirmed that each vote received a timestamp from the registration service (SK ID-Solutions), which serves as third-party confirmation of the vote's existence. This ensures that no one added or deleted votes during the e-voting period.

It will be confirmed that only votes cast using valid electronic ID certificates (ID-card, Mobile-ID, Smart-ID) are present in the ballot box.

The list of e-voters will be compared to the voter roll to ensure that only eligible voters cast ballots and that they voted in the correct electoral district.

It will be confirmed that all e-votes are in the correct format – files digitally signed on the voter's computer.

If a voter has cast multiple e-votes, all but the most recent vote will be removed. If a voter felt influenced during e-voting, did not trust the computer used, or was unable to vote in private, they had the opportunity to recast their vote during election week until Saturday evening. Only the final vote is counted. To eliminate duplicates, it is ensured that only one vote per voter is taken into account.

Starting at 8:15 p.m., the cancellation of duplicate votes begins. If a voter cast both an e-vote and an in-person vote, only the in-person vote will be counted.

Once all 356 polling stations across Estonia have completed their work, the e-vote processor will receive from the election information system a list of voters who voted both electronically and on paper. Then the e-votes of those who voted on paper will be canceled, ensuring that only one vote per voter is counted.

Next, the votes will be anonymized and mixed, after which they will be decrypted and counted.

The votes are decrypted with a secret key that is divided into parts between the National Electoral Committee and the State Electoral Office. To decrypt the votes, more than half of the keyholders must be present, along with more than half of the members of the National Electoral Committee.

When the votes are opened, the system generates a vote-counting certificate. This can be used to prove that the election result is accurate and has not been tampered with. The system also signs the e-voting result, allowing verification that the result entered into the election information system is correct.

The e-voting result will be entered into the election information system and subsequently published on valimised.ee.

On Monday, October 20, the e-votes will be recounted.

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