In May 2018, Norway’s northernmost region – Finnmark County – conducted a referendum in 19 municipalities to let citizens decide if they wanted their region to merge with neighboring Troms County. To facilitate democratic participation, election officials deployed TIVI, an online voting solution developed by the Smartmatic-Cybernetica Centre of Excellence for Internet Voting.

Voters of all ages preferred to cast their ballot electronically, with 95% of voters aged 17 – 60 participating online.

The Voting Process

Citizens had the option to vote online or use traditional paper-based ballots at polling stations. Voting was available for eight days. The high online turnout (85.5%) demonstrated that voters trusted technology and valued convenience.
Online voters could vote via the internet as many times as they wished, but only the final vote was counted. Voters who voted online had the option to override their digital vote by casting a paper ballot in a polling station. This process allowed authorities to eliminate any criminal incentive for voter coercion or buying or selling of online votes.
TIVI was fully integrated with Norway’s ID-Porten to facilitate participation and keep voters informed. ID-Porten is regularly used by citizens to access Norwegian government services online.
Automatic SMS-based electronic poll cards were sent to remind voters about the referendum and to inform them when their online vote was received. To strengthen security and transparency, the system also used a permissioned, private blockchain to protect and prove ballot box integrity.
Smartmatic specializes in the design and deployment of election system technologies.
As the global leader in providing secure, transparent, accessible, verifiable voting systems, Smartmatic is setting the standard for election integrity and inclusivity worldwide, including encrypted result transmission, paper ballot back-up, extensive auditing and Internet voting.

Scope

• 85.5% of voters participated online
• Overwhelming adoption of online voting across all age groups
• First-ever deployment of a blockchain-powered voting system in Norway
• Full integration with Norway’s e-services platform (ID-Porten)