Here, voters vote from home - despite constant attempts to break in

- 99 percent of all community services here in Estonia take place online.

The only thing you can't do online is get married and divorce, says Andres Sutt, who was the country's IT minister until last summer.

A central building block in the thoroughly digitized Estonian society is the digital ID that was introduced in 2002. It is like a state "Bank ID" that, among other things, enables online voting.

At the last parliamentary election, almost every second voter stayed home from the polling station and voted by computer instead.

- We see no clear demographic differences between those who choose to vote digitally or go to the polling station.

It spreads evenly across the age groups, says Erika Piirmets, who is a digital transformation advisor at the Estonian state's innovation agency e-Estonia.

Opportunity for Sweden?

Here in Sweden, the issue of e-voting was investigated in 2013. The investigation suggested that it should be tested in a representative sample of municipalities at the general elections in 2018. Nothing came of it.

- Previously, a number of parties pushed the issue, but the government chose not to proceed with it after the investigation.

Security has become a big issue since the US election in 2016 and since then no one has pushed the issue of voting digitally, explains Anna Nyqvist, head of office at the Electoral Authority.

After the US presidential election in 2016, Russia was accused of trying to influence the election in various ways and to undermine the US democratic system.

- In recent years, we have worked a lot with security around elections, that you should not be able to spread false rumours.

Then it is important to preserve what is good, our manual and transparent system where it is always possible to go back and count pieces of paper, says Anna Nyqvist.

Exposed system

The Estonian digital journey has not been entirely painless.

In 2017, they were forced to temporarily shut down the country's digital ID, due to a security hole.

They are still working on finding a secure way to enable voting on mobile phones.

There are actors nearby who are happy to sabotage if given the opportunity.

- We must constantly be prepared, that is crucial.

You are tested all the time, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

Someone is constantly trying to see if there is a back door into the systems, notes Andres Sutt, who during his time in the Estonian government, not least since the war in Ukraine, was forced to increase funding for the protection of the public IT environment.