Yesterday’s Estonian municipal elections have resulted in considerable gains for the Reform Party (12.2 to 16.9%) of Prime Minister Andrus Ansip, moderate gains for the Estonian People’s Union (11.2 to 12.5%), Mart Laar’s Pro Patria Union (6.2 to 8.6%) and the Social-Democratic Party (4.4 to 6.4%), a status-quo for the Center Party (from 25.9 to 25.5%) and significant losses for Res Publica (15.2 to 8.5%) and the United Russian People’s Party (4.3 to 0.7%).

The municipal elections are good news for the national government – the so-called “garlic coalition” – which is a coalition of the Center Party, the Reform Party and the Estonian People’s Union. The coalition gets its name from having been forged by the party leaders in a restaurant which specializes in garlic dishes (a good idea: you can outstink the opposition). The elections are a disaster for Res Publica, the party of Juhan Parts, who was Prime Minister until April 2005, and for the party of the Russian nationalists. Ethnic Russians make up a quarter of the Estonian population.

The turnout of the elections was a meager 47%, but a quarter of those who did vote (or 11.3% of the electorate) cast their vote electronically through the internet, though this possibility was only available for the 800,000 of the 1.4 million Estonians owning an ID-card which can be read digitally. The e-voters had to cast their votes on 10, 11 or 12 October but could change their minds until the closing hour of the elections on Sunday evening. It was the very first time voters anywhere in the world could e-vote, except for an experiment last year in some referendums in the Swiss canton of Geneva.

There were some notable regional differences in the e-voting turnout. Estonia’s rural and island provinces had most internet voters, with the province of Jögeva on top: 20% of the total electorate here voted electronically. This province also had the highest overall turnout (56.4%). In the cities, where voters did not have to go far to a polling station, electronic voting was least popular, with only 9.2% e-voters in the capital Tallinn, the lowest e-voting percentage in the entire country, followed by the cities Tartu (10.1%) and Pärnu (10.3%). The ethnic-Russian northeastern province of Ida-Viru also had a low number of e-voters (10.7%), although this province had a more than average overall turnout (50.3%).

Correction (October, 18)

The above article was based on an Estonian blog in German which led us to believe that the 11.3% of the electorate casting their votes ahead of last Sunday's elections (129,000 people) were internet voters. This was only the case for 9,300 of them. Nevertheless, the Estonian authorities consider the e-voting to have been a success, exceeding expectations. Ule Madise of the national election commission said:

Voting on the internet can be considered a full success, [...] The participation rate was higher than we expected, and the system functioned without hitches, [...] if e-voting turns out to be a success, it will pave the way for change in Europe and the whole world.