Important reminder for voters: Almost one million Finns receive a notification of their right to vote in general elections electronically

“All eligible voters who use Suomi.fi Messages will receive a notification of their right to vote in the general elections in electronic form instead of receiving it in mail. In other words, if you do not receive a notification of your right to vote by post at the turn of February and March, you should check your Suomi.fi Messages and check that your e-mail address is correct there. Notifications of new incoming messages are sent to the email address that the user has entered into the service,” reminds Maria Juka-Lahdenperä, Service Owner of Suomi.fi Messages from the Digital and Population Data Services Agency.

Electronic notifications are a significant eco-action

Sending notifications electronically is also a significant eco-action, as it saves millions of pages of paper.

“Voters who use Suomi.fi Messages will save more than four million sheets of paper already now. If this amount of paper were to be collected into a single stack, it would form a stack of paper approximately 400 metres high. That is nearly 2.5 Näsinneula Towers,” explains Juka-Lahdenperä.

More paper than this could be saved. “We calculated that if all those entitled to vote in the general elections received notification of their right to vote electronically this year, almost 16 million sheets of paper would be saved. This amount of paper would accumulate a stack about 1.6 kilometres high, which is more than five Eiffel towers on top of each other,” says Juka-Lahdenperä.

You will receive a notification of your right to vote electronically when you activate Suomi.fi Messages by 9 February

The Digital and Population Data Services Agency encourages the introduction of Suomi.fi Messages by 9 February 2023. You will then receive the notification of this spring's general elections and of your right to vote electronically instead of on paper. The person entitled to vote does not need to print a copy of the electronically received voting rights notification in order to present it at the polling station.

You can access Suomi.fi Messages by downloading the Suomi.fi mobile application or by identifying yourself at https://suomi.fi/viestit. Identification takes place with bank credentials, a mobile certificate or an electronic ID card. By introducing Suomi.fi Messages, you will also receive electronic mail sent by several other authorities.

What Suomi.fi Messages?

Suomi.fi Messages is a secure electronic mailbox that replaces official mail that arrives via paper mail. The service is used by several authorities and its use is constantly increasing. Incoming messages can be read using the Suomi.fi mobile application or by identifying yourself in the Suomi.fi Web Service at https://suomi.fi. This way, you can read the incoming mail wherever you go. The notifications of new incoming messages are sent to the email address that you have provided to the service. Users of the Suomi.fi mobile application will also receive the notification directly through the app.