TIVI Runs a Hybrid Referendum on Digital and Paper
In April 2026, the Norwegian municipalities of Gjøvik, Vestre Toten, and Østre Toten held a binding referendum. TIVI delivered the digital half of a hybrid referendum that ran for seven continuous days, authenticated every voter through Norway’s national identity system, and reconciled electronic and paper ballots under rules that gave paper the final word.
A hybrid model with strict reconciliation rules
The three municipalities ran a single advisory referendum across two channels. Voters could cast a digital ballot through TIVI or a paper ballot at a polling station. If a voter did both, the paper ballot canceled the electronic one. If a voter voted digitally more than once, only the last submission counted. TIVI was configured to enforce both rules and to support post-election reconciliation against a revocation list.
- ID-porten authentication (BankID and MinID) for every voter
- Last-vote-wins logic for repeat digital submissions
- Paper-override reconciliation against a revocation list
- Double decryption: results generated immediately at close, then again after paper-ballot removal
Deployment by the numbers
- 50,526 eligible voters across three municipalities
- 7-day continuous voting window, 22 to 29 April 2026
- 65% turnout
- Bilingual ballot and interface, Norwegian and English
- AWS infrastructure with 24/7 availability, multi-AZ distribution, CloudFront CDN, and AWS WAF
- Daily turnout reporting per municipality, segmented by gender and age range
- Coordinated SMS campaigns from the municipal election boards across the voting window
Beyond This Election
- Hybrid integrity. Digital and paper channels can run together when reconciliation rules are enforced in the platform, not improvised after the fact.
- National identity at scale. Integration with sovereign ID systems gives election authorities authentication they already trust.
- Late-stage flexibility. Infrastructure and cryptographic procedures can absorb new requirements, including double decryption, without delaying the vote.
- Multilingual access. A single deployment can serve residents and eligible non-native speakers in their preferred language.
Ready to Modernize Without Replacing Paper?
See how TIVI handles hybrid referendums with paper-override reconciliation