Elections, Referendums and Parties

Abstract

By the end of 2014, the Baltic states had held a total of 19 parliamentary, 19 municipal and 3 cycles of European Parliament elections. Lithuania, which elects its president via a national popular vote, had additionally held six presidential polls. Another 23 referendums have been held since August 1991. The rigidity of the Lithuanian and Latvian electoral and judicial institutions have been tested by the 2004 impeachment of Lithuanian president, Rolandas Paksas, and the subsequent early presidential election, as well as a referendum on the recall of Latvia’s parliament in the summer of 2011 and the following early election. Estonia is recognised as an electoral innovator, being the first state in the world to regularly use Internet voting in municipal and national elections. Elections are now a normal, even occasionally boring, part of the Baltic political system. Indeed, trends from older Western democracies – declining turnout, disenchanted voters – have taken hold in the post-communist Baltic and East-Central European regions.