Election night in documents: what Latvia's Central Election Commission said about the delayed vote count

Decision No 80 allowed only the election-day boxes to be opened and the envelopes to be counted "until the number of valid envelopes is determined" (likumi.lv). The CVK statement of 4 October described this as permission "to start counting the election-day votes" (cvk.lv). In the terms of the instruction, counting the envelopes is part of counting the votes, but the ballot papers themselves were not yet being counted.

In the minutes, the reasoning for the decision says the boxes may be opened in polling stations "where the check of the number of ETVR marks has already been done". The decision itself contains no such condition.

Point 13 of the instruction said: "First, one at a time, open the ballot boxes containing registration envelopes (votes cast in advance, ETVR outages)." Before that, under point 7.4, "when voters who have cast their vote in advance can no longer re-vote", each polling station has to check in the ETVR which voters voted again after casting an advance vote (instruction No 16).

In its letter to the CVK, the VDAA writes that the delay "cannot be linked to ETVR malfunctions". Counting could not start, it says, "until all polling stations have satisfied themselves that the voter data registered in the ETVR are correct and complete". So the boxes with advance votes could not be opened in any polling station until all of them had finished the check. At a press conference that night, Zviedris said that after midnight 25 of 1059 polling stations were still finalising the number of voters (LSM). The CVK statement of 4 October says the meeting was called when the municipal commissions signalled that they "no longer want to wait for other colleagues".

A similar dependency, though on a smaller scale, already existed in 2022. The CVK's 2022 report to the Saeima says the postal-voting stations abroad could start counting "only after voting had ended in all in-person polling stations".

Asked whether the procedure was tested before the election, the CVK replies that polling stations could try it out in practical exercises from 25 to 30 August. Testing is the VDAA's responsibility. The VDAA writes that the ETVR underwent "extensive performance tests and practical exercises", including with 6000 simultaneous users, "also testing cases where more than 742 voters have changed their vote". No performance or functional shortcomings were found. The VDAA does not give the dates of the tests.

The testing and risk-assessment documents were not released, and neither institution explains why. The CVK turned to the VDAA on 22 October, nine days after receiving our request. The VDAA replied the next day. The letters do not show whether the tests also looked at how long all polling stations would have to wait until the last one finished the check.

The CVK does not answer directly whether polling-station commissions raised concerns before the election. It writes that there was an opportunity to ask questions at the training sessions and seminars, and that where something was unclear, VDAA staff demonstrated the ETVR functions again. At the press conference on election night, as LSM reports it, Zviedris admitted that the polling stations had asked few questions during training and evidently should have asked more.

In the LTV programme "Viens pret vienu" (recorded on 25 August, published by LSM on 29 August), Zviedris recalled the 2025 municipal elections, when a decision was awaited for almost three hours because of communication breakdowns. Asked whether that would happen again, he replied: "No, half an hour is the maximum. There has to be a decision within half an hour." (Nē, maksimums ir pusstunda. Pusstundas laikā jābūt lēmumam.) (LSM)

The CVK now writes that "no internal procedure setting such a time limit has been approved", and that the decision was taken "less than 30 minutes after the meeting was called". From the invitation at 22:24 to the end of the meeting at 22:50, 26 minutes passed. From the moment the CVK itself established the problem (22:00), 50 minutes passed. The half hour referred to the decision, not to the start of counting. The decision solved only part of the problem: the advance votes could be counted only after 00:18.

Error

1. The instruction number. The signed Decision No 80 and the minutes of meeting No 35 say "instruction No 18". The instruction is No 16 (adopted on 18 June, minutes No 15, § 3). In the decision published in the official gazette Latvijas Vēstnesis on 6 October, the number is already 16 (likumi.lv), so the error was corrected in the official publication. But the signed original released by the CVK does not match it, and likumi.lv shows no correction note. The minutes, signed on 19 and 20 October, still say "No 18".

2. The title of the VDAA letter. It reads "Reply on the data of Saeima candidates", although the letter is about ETVR testing.

Conflicting wording

3. "Started immediately". The CVK reply says vote counting "started immediately after the polling station closed". This matches point 2 of the instruction, under which counting also covers the preparatory work. The CVK's own statement of 4 October says: "The check of the status of votes cast in advance delayed the start of vote counting in the 15th Saeima election, because the instruction required the validity of these votes to be checked first." (cvk.lv)

4. When it was signed. The decision is dated 3 October but was signed on 4 October at 01:02 and 01:15. The commissions had been told about it at 22:56. The minutes were signed on 19 and 20 October, 16–17 days after the meeting. We have not checked whether the CVK's rules set a deadline for signing minutes.

5. "One eighth". On election night Zviedris told LTV: "In the 2022 Saeima election, votes could be cast in advance in only one eighth of the polling stations, which means seven eighths of the polling stations faced it for the first time this year." (2022. gadā Saeimas vēlēšanās tikai astotajā daļā iecirkņu varēja nodot balsis glabāšanā, un tas nozīmē – septiņas astotdaļas iecirkņu šogad ar to saskārās pirmoreiz.) (LSM) According to the CVK's 2022 report, there were 66 advance-voting stations out of 949 polling stations in Latvia, that is, about 7%, not 12.5%. So about 93% of polling stations faced the procedure for the first time.

6. "Almost sevenfold". On 4 October LSM wrote in a headline, paraphrasing what Zviedris told LTV, that the number of voters who changed their vote had "increased almost sevenfold" (LSM). In 2022 there were 139 such voters (CVK 2022 report); in 2026 there were 742 (CVK turnout data). That is about 5.3 times as many. What figure Zviedris compared with is not known.

On election night Zviedris stressed on Latvian Radio that what matters most is not time but accuracy (LSM). Most polling stations were handling advance voting for the first time. In the CVK statement Zviedris stresses: "In a process as large as a parliamentary election, checking and verifying data is an essential part of the work, and it takes time." (Tik plaša mēroga procesā kā parlamenta vēlēšanas datu pārbaude un precizēšana ir būtiska darba daļa, kurai nepieciešams laiks.) The CVK writes that it "took responsibility for the decision in order to ensure an accurate count of the votes", and that this reduces the risk of the results being challenged. No document casts doubt on the accuracy of the results.

In 2026, 169 613 voters cast their vote in advance at polling stations; in 2022 the figure was 63 342 (CVK data). Advance voting at all polling stations in Latvia from Monday to Friday was introduced by the Saeima in 2025 (bill No 906/Lp14, submitted by the Public Administration and Local Government Committee). The CVK writes that it gave no opinion on these amendments, but that CVK proposals were considered in the Saeima, "including on the accessibility of voting". We did not find CVK proposals in the bill's tables of proposals. In its 2022 report, the CVK itself called for more advance-voting stations: to cut the threshold "at least by half", or to let municipalities set it themselves.

• Which polling stations finished the check only around midnight, and why. What exactly the 00:18 notice that "it is possible to check" the votes to be annulled meant. We did not ask that specific question.
• Why the signed decision differs from the officially published one, and who corrected the number and when.
• What exactly the VDAA tests checked, and whether the waiting time was assessed.