FINN ELECTIONS RECENTLY AS RELAYED TO THE NEWS OFFICE DESK OF PAEDIA EXPRESS BY FINN JOURNALIST:TIMO SIPOLA

Finland goes to the polls on Sunday to elect Councillors in nearly 300 municipalities across the country. We'll have all the latest news and results throughout the day on this live blog.

Image: Timo Jaakonaho / Lehtikuva

klo 00:23: We're wrapping things up here, but we've posted a lot of the reaction and news over on our main article. The big story, of course, is that Jan Vapaavuori carried his National Coalition Party to an election victory, gathering nearly 30,000 votes--more than any other candidate in the country. Here's a taste of what the main figures had to say for themselves:
"The number of votes is so overwhelming that it's humbling. Of course it's clear that the mayoral race is also influencing the election result," Vapaavuori said.
"Among the big parties, the SDP is one of the few to have maintained support over 19 percent in successive elections," party leader and ex-union man Antti Rinne said of the results.
"We've had a clear policy to criticise the government for spending cuts and tax policies that increase inequality," Leftist leader Li Andersson told Yle.
You can read the whole story here.

klo 22:22: Yle's election forecast has been publihsed, and it suggests that the National Coalition Party is set to emerge as the biggest party. The forecast does come with a health warning, however: as turnout is higher than last time, and vote-counting is slower, than before, the forecast is much less certain than usual. The forecasted final vote tallies are:
SDP: 19.2%
NCP: 20.4%
Centre: 17.6%
Greens: 13.6%
Left: 8.9%
Finns: 8.2%
SPP: 4.9%
CD: 4.1%
Other: 3.2%

We've updated our story with quotes from Finns Party figures Timo Soini and Jussi Halla-aho:
"Politics is such that when you've been in 17 elections and won 16, the day will come when you don't win anymore. That day was today," he declared.
Halla-aho was guarded in his response to the early returns, however he acknowledged that even those results defied his expectations.
"At this stage the results are weaker than I would have expected," he told Yle.
However he noted that it would be foolhardy to forecast the final results on the basis of the early count. He said that he hoped the party would recover lost ground as the vote count proceeded, especially in Helsinki, where the party appeared to be lagging behind.

klo 20:45: Our story has the latest vote tallies, updated every 20-30 minutes. For more up-to-the-minute numbers check the Justice Ministry's website (in English) or Yle's own results service (Finnish only).
Current results show advance votes and some of the votes cast today. Traditionally older people tend to vote in advance, with young voters turning up on the day.

klo 20:19: SDP leader Antti Rinne is beaming from ear to ear right now, as his party leads in preliminary results.

klo 20:17: Green Party leader Ville Niinistö thanks the party faithful for what looks like a decent election result, with 10.3 percent of the vote nationwide.

klo 20:11: Preliminary results show big losses for the Finns Party compared to both the 2015 parliamentary election and the last municipal elections in 2012. Here's our initial results story:
Preliminary results in Finland's local elections suggest the co-ruling Finns Party has lost a big chunk of support since the last parliamentary election in 2015, when the party polled 17.7 percent of the vote. The party is struggling to match the 12.3 percent it recorded in the last local elections in 2012, with nearly half of the expected votes counted.
You can see up to the minute results on national and local levels here.

klo 19:36: Yle's television coverage is underway on TV1.Here are the final preparations:

Anni Sinnemäki (left) and Jan Vapaavuori were the two leading candidates to become mayor of Helsinki.

klo 18:46: One big prize on offer in tonight's elections is the post of mayor of Helsinki. The parties have agreed that the group with the most votes in the city will have their candidate installed as mayor, and the polls indicated the race will be a straight fight between the Green Party's Anni Sinnemäki and the National Coalition's Jan Vapaavuori.

klo 16:59: And here's our story on the difficulties with electronic voter registers in up to 15 municipalities:

Finnish voters have to pick a candidate and write their number on their ballot paper.

Several voters found themselves in an unexpected pickle when they turned up to vote in local government elections Sunday morning. The country’s central electronic voter register informed officials that some people had already cast a ballot, although they argued that they had not.
It later emerged that the misinformation came from a glitch in the electronic voter register, which has been used in elections since the turn of the millennium.
According to the Justice Ministry, which supervises elections in Finland, officials encountered problems with the electronic system in 10 or 15 municipalities across the country. Two electoral officials told Yle that some voters became upset when they were forced to wait for the problem to be solved.
In Nakkila in the Satakunta region of southwest Finland, it took 15 minutes to sort out the glitch, during which time voters left the polling station. Local government officials were then forced to call voters in an effort to get them to return to the polls.
"We have had many dress rehearsals, and even advance voting went off without any problems. The problems began today," said Annika Rauma, secretary of the Central Election Commission in Kaustinen in central Ostrobothnia.

klo 16:30: We're getting reports that between 10 and 15 municipalities had difficulties with the electronic election register they use to keep track of voters. During the outage some voters were inaccurately told they had already voted, and left the polling station. Officials are urging any voters turned away due to technical difficulties to go back to their polling station to vote.
More on this story as we get it.

klo 14:49: Yle is reporting that counting of advance votes has already begun. Those votes should be counted by the time polls close at 8pm, allowing preliminary results to be published almost instantaneously.

klo 13:15: "Election coffees" or vaalikahvit are a peculiar Finnish tradition in which voters celebrate democracy by going for a coffee and something sweet after they've cast their vote. Social media is of course the number one forum for posting photos of your meals, and here's a selection of Finnish Instagram users' election coffees.

klo 13:10: The polls are open in Finland's municipal elections, with voters flocking to the polls. Here's our story on election day, which is actually the final day of voting--many Finns have already cast their ballots in advance.
Over 26 percent of eligible voters – or 1.1 million people – have already cast their vote in advance voting, which took place in Finland from 29 March to 1 April. Election researcher Sami Borg from the University of Tampere predicts that the voting percentage may climb past 60 percent this year, up from the 2012 election turnout of 58.3 percent.