After the 2018 election, the Election Review Board received just over 700 appeals, and after the 2022 election, there were just over 400.
By Monday afternoon, the number of appeals against this year's election results had passed 15,000.
The Electoral Review Board has previously stated that many of the appeals appear to be related to the suspected election fraud in Borlänge. At the same time, there are various calls online to submit an appeal, according to Svante O Johansson.
"I can't say how much or how little depends on different things. There are very different variations," he says.
But we have seen that there are a lot of unspecified appeals. Sometimes it just says "corrupt" and nothing about where something wrong has happened. Of course, it is not possible to investigate.
“Sticks out”
Emma Ricknell, lecturer in political science at Linnaeus University, has studied how discussions about election fraud have looked in various online forums during the recent elections.
This year's volume of appeals is unique, she notes.
Yes, it stands out. I haven't seen this kind of digital activism or mobilization before. Sure, we've had discussions, but not of this magnitude and not that it's resulted in this many appeals.
“Getting overloaded”
At the same time, the number of appeals can easily give a false impression of whether the result was correct or not, according to Emma Ricknell.
It is a democratic right to appeal an election. So there is really nothing problematic about it. However, it is a bit strange if you think it is like a petition, where the number of appeals would lead to the Election Review Board making a certain decision, she says.
Instead, what actually happens is that the Election Review Board becomes overloaded.
Svante O Johansson is on the same track.
It's important to remember that the number of appeals doesn't matter. It's what's in them that matters, he says.
Several different preliminary investigations with the heading "improper influence during voting" are ongoing after the election.
The most high-profile case concerns suspected election fraud linked to the Left Party in Dalarna, where local politician Mohamed Ali received 648 personal votes and thus took Dalarna's only parliamentary seat for V.
Mohamed Ali himself has said he is shocked by the information and has requested two weeks off from parliament pending the investigation. A Left Party member at the municipal level in Dalarna has also taken a break, according to local media, until the investigation is complete.
The prosecutor has been tight-lipped about the investigation, but stated last week that no one has been detained or charged with a crime in the case.
