Last autumn there were elections for the Sami Parliament on the Finnish side, where the election results were decided on 4 October.
But on March 27 earlier this year, the Supreme Administrative Court annulled the election results. The reason was that the court considered that the Sámi Parliament’s electoral board wrongly excluded 65 people from the voter’s list and the election had to be redone.
Now the election has been done again and on Wednesday the first preliminary election results were presented, where the turnout fell from last fall from 51.6 percent to 48.08 percent.
A total of 6,125 people were eligible to vote but only 2,945 voted while 185 votes were invalid.
Kyrö received the most votes
The member who received the most votes according to the first result is Kari Kyrö from Enare with 215 votes.
He did not run in the election last fall because the election board had not recorded him in the voter’s register, but he received 220 votes in the 2019 election.
Pirita Näkkäläjärvi, who became chairman of the Sami Parliament on the Finnish side, as recently as January received the second most votes, 187 votes.
Based on today’s results, member Marko Katajamaa from Ivalo now loses his seat, while Inka Kangasniemi is now elected. She did not stand in the autumn elections, but still sat in the Sámi Parliament during the previous election period.
“Went very smoothly”
Aslak Pieski, chairman of the election committee, says Howl that the counting of votes, which began on Tuesday morning, went smoothly.
– The vote count was completed in record time. It went faster than before and everything went very smoothly, he says.
The election results will be determined later on Wednesday evening.