Protection of the Internet votes

The Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development has informed the national Internet election committee that there has been an error in the encryption of the Internet votes cast in the advance voting period.

The error has been corrected and has no effects on the election results. All Internet votes are correctly cast and will be correctly counted.

There are very few people who have had access to the systems, and all activity in the system is logged. The logs confirm that there have been no irregularities regarding the affected votes. The Ministry will order an external review of the logs to get them verified.

Security relating to Internet voting is important. Some of the Internet votes are now less encrypted than planned. The Ministry therefore introduces even stricter access control to the systems until the decryption and counting of the votes on election night. At the same time the physical security of the servers has been tightened.

The National Internet Election Committee has taken the Ministry’s reviews into account.

Twelve municipalities are participating in Internet voting trials. These twelve are Bodø, Bremanger, Fredrikstad, Hammerfest, Larvik, Mandal, Radøy, Re, Sandnes, Tynset, Vefsn and Ålesund.

The voters in these municipalities can cast an advance vote using the Internet until midnight on Friday 6 September. These voters can in addition vote with a paper ballot in a regular polling station. If the voter has cast a paper ballot, this vote will be the one being counted.