The early voting for the presidential election ends on Tuesday, January 23, 2024. The early voting and postal voting documents received by the municipal central election board must be checked at a meeting of the central election board so that the early voting documents received before 7:00 p.m. on Friday, January 26, 2024 can be processed there. The central election board decided on the preparatory check of the early voting documents at a meeting held on December 7, 2023.

According to the instructions of the Ministry of Justice, checks are made, among other things, that:

- the brown election envelope inside the yellow envelopes is closed and that no markings concerning the voter or candidate or any other inappropriate markings have been made on it

- the cover letter contains the voter's signature and the election officer's signature

Advance voting must be disregarded if:

A person who has voted in advance has not been included in the voting rights register;

A voter or candidate or other inappropriate marking has been made on the ballot envelope;

The letter of transmission is so incomplete or unclear that it cannot be ascertained with certainty whether the vote took place in accordance with the law, or to determine who voted;

The signature of the person over 18 years of age who was present at the vote is missing from the home voting envelope.

If the above-mentioned criteria for non-recognition are not met, the advance vote must be accepted. The accepted ballot envelope must be separated from the mailing letter.

In addition to the reasons referred to in section 63, subsections 1–3 of the Election Act, postal voting shall be disregarded if:

1) based on the mailing or sending markings on the postal ballot envelope, it cannot be certain that the envelope was mailed or sent from abroad;

2) the postal ballot envelope is open and it can be concluded that the opening is due to something other than a technical malfunction of the envelope, or otherwise such that it cannot be certain that the vote has taken place in accordance with the law;

3) the signatures of the witnesses to the postal vote referred to in section 66 d, subsection 5 are missing from the postal vote transmission letter.

After checking the postal voting documents, the Central Election Commission shall, while maintaining the secrecy of the vote, open the approved postal voting envelopes, stamp the ballot papers in them and seal the stamped ballot papers in the envelopes referred to in section 50, subsection 1. Stamping and resealing shall be carried out in elections other than municipal elections before the envelopes are delivered to the electoral district committee in accordance with section 64, and in municipal elections no later than 15 p.m. on the Saturday preceding election day.

When a vote is disregarded, a note shall be made in the minutes of the meeting of the Central Election Commission. The ballot envelope may not be opened. The disregarded unopened ballot envelope, together with the cover letter and envelope, shall be attached to the minutes.

The Central Election Board shall count the number of approved ballot envelopes and state the number of people registered as having voted in the electoral register in the minutes of the Central Election Board.

The approved election envelopes are packed in bundles of one hundred, packaged and sealed to await delivery to the Pirkanmaa Electoral District Board.

The Secretary of the Central Election Board enters the information into the election system and delivers the sealed election envelopes and votes to the electoral district board. The Secretary of the Central Election Board, together with the Chairman of the Central Election Board, enters the Sunday vote count into the results calculation system.

Appendix 1: Summary list of advance voting