Election Day in Finland

The polls are now open, and soon Finland will know whether or not Tarja Halonen will take the election in one round, or alternatively if a second round will be held. If Halonen doesn't get a majority of the vote, the second round will be held between the top two performers. She's running against 7 other candidates, but it looks like at best they could prolong the election, but not win. At the last poll she had nearly a 30% lead (something like 51% and second place with 23%).

The actual system of voting is quite different from in the US. As the ad from Heidi Hautala of the Green Party demonstrates, all the political ads in Finland proudly display a number from 2 to x, x being the number of candidates plus one because no one is assigned the number 1. These numbers are randomly assigned to the candidates. Then, when one goes to the polls on the Sunday of election day (or the Sunday of the week before election day for pre-voting if you are unavailable on the actual day), in order to cast your vote you simply write the number of the person you'd like to vote for. At first glance this system seems flawed, as the numbers 9 and 4 can look quite similar. The Finns general write there number different than the average American, though, so this hasn't been an earthshaking problem. Plus everyone basically knows at least this time around that when in doubt, the vote was for 9, Tarja Halonen. Could you imagine, in the US for example, a 30% lead going into election day!??!