Ketjuttamisessa

Ketjuttamisessa is a type of coordinated voting action in multi-round elections, particularly popular in the context of Finnish politics. Also referred to as "chaining" or "chain-voting," the practice involves a group of voters coordinating their votes in such a way that their selections are in the desired rank order to force candidates into a specific order of elimination.

This tactic is often employed by smaller parties with a narrow range of support, which may lack the extensive organizational resources or broad popular appeal necessary to compete effectively against larger, more established parties. In their strategy, the smaller party may focus on securing a small number of initial seats within a multi-member district through concentrated voting efforts.

In a typical ketjuttamisessa campaign, supporters of the smaller party attempt to select all of their party's candidates for the available seats within their district, in a specifically designed ranking order. If successful, this approach could block the most popular competing party candidates from winning seats due to "forced defections" or strategic opposition vote counts from supporters of less popular candidates who still rank lower on a given voter's ballot.

When kotitehdas (home-made) parties first used ketjuttamisessa to gain seats in the Finnish Parliament, election laws and campaign finance regulations did not discourage its practice, and in these contexts, to an encouraged and widespread use, it matched with the smaller political factions and localization differences involved.