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Election Special: Norway 2025
21 Plays18 days ago
Lily Russell-Jones interviews Director of Democracy Volunteers, Dr. John Ault, on the deployment of observers at the Norwegian Parliamentary Election. The interview covers topics from changes in law affecting family voting through to potential foreign interference, listen in to learn the intricacies of polling day in Norway.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Episode
00:00:09
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Observations, a podcast brought to you by Democracy Volunteers. My name is Lily Russell-Jones and today I'm joined by John Ault, the Director of Democracy Volunteers.
00:00:21
Speaker
Hello John, thanks for joining Hi Lily, how are you? Very well, thank
Norway's Election Atmosphere
00:00:26
Speaker
you. Tonight we're going to be talking about Norway's general election and what your observers be seeing on the ground. So what's the atmosphere like in Norway, John? Can you paint us a bit of a picture?
00:00:37
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. Voting does just happened on one day in Norway. They've actually been doing it for several weeks. um And yesterday was a full day of election, voting in quite a lot of polling stations across the country.
00:00:49
Speaker
um And today, everywhere's voting. And the turnout's been very high from what we can tell. The TV's reporting it's probably going to be the 70%, which compared to the uk as you know, is ah very high.
Understanding Norway's Political System
00:01:00
Speaker
And where exactly are talking to Liverpool?
00:01:04
Speaker
Well, you can probably the wind in the background. I'm standing on an island about 20 miles outside Bergen on the west coast of Norway. Is it good weather this time of year? It sounds a bit windy.
00:01:16
Speaker
Well, I think it's supposed to be a pouring down and I can see a big cloud behind the camera as if it is going to rain later, but at the moment it's absolutely glorious. Oh, well, lucky. Lucky for you then.
00:01:27
Speaker
Yeah, surprising as well. Today is Norway's general election, so that normally happens every four years and they're electing 169 members of parliament. That's much less today, isn't it?
00:01:39
Speaker
Yeah, we have 650 MPs, not including those in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Yeah, absolutely right. So how does the political system work in Norway? Can you break that down a little bit for for listeners?
Norway's Voting Process
00:01:52
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, their electoral system is very different from ours. They have a sort of list proportional representation system. um It leads to smaller parties being supported in the process. If you get over 4% of the vote, you tend to get members of parliament elected.
00:02:05
Speaker
So it's rare that you see a majority government. In fact, that's been one for a very long time. So as a consequence, yeah, it's a coalition-led country. It tends to be a number of parties working together.
00:02:16
Speaker
And at the moment, the Prime Minister is Jonas Gartorin, the Labour Party, and he was elected in 2021 and he is in a coalition government with the Centre Party, is that right? Yeah, that's right.
00:02:28
Speaker
Brilliant. So let's talk about how voting works in Norway. Yes, it's very different in terms of what you see in a polling station. Obviously, in our country, you tend to get one ballot paper, you go into a polling booth and you use it. Here, you go into a polling booth and there can be dozens of ballot papers all in a sort of tray in front of you.
00:02:45
Speaker
There tend to be the similar number of votes in each pile because basically they don't want to encourage people to vote. realise who's winning, if some are disappearing more than others, and you pick one of those ballot papers, um you tick it, you put it in the ballot box, it gets stamped actually before you put it in the ballot box, and then that's you voted.
00:03:02
Speaker
So yeah, it's very different. um It's all done behind a curtain. If you ever remember watching The Wizard of Oz, it's a bit like that. There's a big curtain that goes around the voter. ah They do it in privacy behind the curtain, and then they appear as if like the but The Wizard of Oz, and they go and vote in the ballot box. It's very simple, ah but it's very different to what we we're used to seeing yeah.
00:03:21
Speaker
Okay and are there any other quirks to the Norwegian voting system that you think that readers should know about?
Unique Voting Practices in Norway
00:03:29
Speaker
Yes, I mean, one of the things that's very interesting is obviously here you have a ballot paper of each party. There can be dozens, literally dozens of different types of ballot paper in the polling booth. But here they also have ah blank ballot paper, but basically none of the above paper, which we we would never see.
00:03:44
Speaker
You don't see on a British ballot paper none of the above of parties. But here you do. So that's one of the weirdnesses that you might find difficult to understand. But basically there's a blank ballot paper that you can use, put that in the ballot box, and that could be also essentially a vote against everybody.
00:03:58
Speaker
Yeah, that's quite a decisive way of saying none of the above. yeah sounds And what have your volunteers been observing on the ground?
Role of Democracy Volunteers
00:04:06
Speaker
Because you've had lots of people out with you, haven't you?
00:04:09
Speaker
yeah Yeah, we've got about 30 observers across the country. We've got a big team in Oslo, obviously, is significantly the largest city in the country. We're in Bergen, there's four of us here. ah We've got people in Stavanger, in Lilligham, perhaps you're too young to remember, but I remember the 1994 Winter Olympics were there.
00:04:27
Speaker
and We've got people in Frederikstad, beautiful city in the south of the country. We've got people in Kristiansand, all sorts of places, um you know, being in sports, trying to see you know what the country's doing across the country. We've got a team as far north as Trondheim. It took them six and a half hours to get there yesterday on the train.
00:04:44
Speaker
Okay, and I think famously Norway is the country with the most Winter Olympic medals. Yes, I think they're good. I'm not surprised. I get i get the impression of when we came on the train hit to Bergen yesterday, even now there are snow-capped glaciers across the top of the mountain. So, yeah, they've they've got a lot of snow to practice on.
Concerns About Voting Integrity
00:05:01
Speaker
And has there been any behaviour at the polling booth today that's concerned you or has raised any red flags? um we do We always see, whatever the country, whatever the domestic political situation, we do see people assisting other people in polling booths.
00:05:16
Speaker
We don't see violence in places like Norway. There's been a steady stream of activity all day, lots of people going to the polls. One of the things that I've noticed, our observers saying, is they do sense a lot more people actually turning up and voting here. and I think the first polling station St. Bergen, so would say 163 people voted, which is obviously very busy compared to a UK polling station.
00:05:36
Speaker
But in practice, they're getting on with it, they're doing well, but fundamentally there are always those subtleties that we need to identify to try and improve the process going forward. Right, and you think people are going into polling booths in two?
00:05:50
Speaker
is that Is that what you mean? Yeah, basically we're still seeing family voting where two people do vote together in a polling booth, but Recently, the Norwegians actually changed their rule to actually make that possible.
00:06:02
Speaker
What has to happen is the voter who needs assistance can identify the person who wants to assist them. In the UK, we generally have that. we require it to be a member of staff, so it's someone impartial.
00:06:15
Speaker
Here, they've actually changed that law, but we are not convinced that's the best way of going, because we don't know the process by which that member of the family or friend was appointed. It's entirely possible you think about it, as they go into the polling station, one person says the other, you're going to appoint me as your proxy to go and do it with you. And if they have a sort of a relationship where that might be needing to happen, it obviously means that people will vote with somebody else and they can say it was them appointing. So we are concerned about that as one of the challenges they have in their system.
Foreign Interference in Elections
00:06:44
Speaker
And the data will tell at the end of the day if we've seen much of it, but already we we can see it in the data that some people are voting together in polling booths.
00:06:52
Speaker
Okay, so seeing two people going together, sometimes it's an accessibility requirement, but other times you might have this concern that someone could be seeing how someone else votes, telling someone how to vote even.
00:07:03
Speaker
Yeah, but we want to see a member of staff, someone impartial, doing that with the voter rather than a member of the family, because all's said and done, you don't know the relationship, the dynamic of those two people, ah whereas a member of staff is independent and able to help without prejudice one way or the other.
00:07:20
Speaker
And John, leading up to this election, there were some concerns, weren't there, about possible foreign interference? So this happens a lot in European elections. Have you seen this manifesting in any way while you were there or in the lead up to the election?
00:07:35
Speaker
I think, bear in mind the international situation as it stands at the moment, it's only reasonable for ah Western democracies to think and and to worry that other negative actors, countries like Russia, China, Iran, we know who they are, are interested in trying to affect and undermine the nature of Western democracy.
00:07:54
Speaker
So I think it's entirely possible that the Norwegians quite rightly have tried to involve the security service and the police to make sure their elections are as smooth and as trusted as possible.
00:08:07
Speaker
I think there's nothing that we've identified obviously on the ground, it's very difficult to do so, but we know at the briefing yesterday at the ministry where they brief all international observers that there is concern about international ah attempts to try and undermine the the democratic process here.
00:08:22
Speaker
Only time will tell to see if that's happened and only time will tell whether it's had any
Types of Electoral Interference
00:08:26
Speaker
effect. But every Western government is reasonably concerned about that because the thing we have that they don't have is we have democracy and it's something where people get involved, they have their say and our governments are run based on at that process.
00:08:42
Speaker
It's easy for other countries to try to undermine that. If they undermine it, undermine trust in the electoral process, then we end up with ah democracies aren't trusted by the by the wreck population of those countries.
00:08:53
Speaker
ah And that obviously is a bad thing. And do we know how interference happens? It can be very difficult to work out what is going on time. Isn't that right? There are different forms of of challenges to elections. What is misinformation about social media, online activity is one key way of undermining the electoral process. i went to a conference not that long ago in Canada and actually voters in Canada now believe not Russia, not China, even the UK, the old country, are infamous, the biggest influence on.
00:09:26
Speaker
misinformation in the Canadian elections were here. um Yeah, I mean, we recently had an issue when we were in Finland where there's something called a DDoS attack, where essentially the Ministry of Justice who run the electoral register was attacked online by hackers.
00:09:40
Speaker
And that's the sort of thing where we look at high level technological issues that challenge the way the state essentially runs things like ID, like the electoral register, because if you can try and hack into that if you're a bad actor, that can clearly have an impact on the way elections are run and decrease trust in them as well.
Conclusion and Farewell
00:09:59
Speaker
Absolutely. ah John, I'm going to finish that because I know that you must be busy getting on with the election and the legislation. There's a polling station just behind the camera I need to go in. Oh really? Okay, well I'm going to be very mean and I'm going to ask you, can you give any prediction of who you think might win tonight?
00:10:18
Speaker
We don't, you know perfectly well Lily, we don't talk about things like that. Our job is to evaluate the process and you're being very naughty to try and get me to tell you an answer. Thank you very much for joining me, John.
00:10:29
Speaker
It's been a pleasure to have you on. And if you enjoyed this episode, please do follow us for more. but We're also available on YouTube at Observations Podcast, No Spaces. My name is Lily Russell-Jones. Thank you very much for listening.
00:10:43
Speaker
Cheers, Zoe.