"Our analysis shows that a maximum of 500 voters will likely not be able to be identified. That number may decrease. This is of course very serious and should not be allowed to happen," says Anna Nyqvist, head of the Swedish Election Authority, in a press release.
The unidentified voters are in a group where votes have been incorrectly assigned to another voter's voter list number and therefore not registered correctly. This is because the vote receiver has started receiving a new vote without first finishing receiving the vote for the voter.
Another reason why votes are registered incorrectly is that people have voted early more than once, which makes all early votes invalid.
Others have been registered incorrectly because vote recipients have had to discard an envelope, for example because the first one broke, and take a new one. Those envelopes are easy to distinguish and since they are empty envelopes, the voter's vote is not affected.
"We will not be able to contact affected voters because we do not know who they are. We therefore ask for patience while we wait for more information about which locations and times are covered," says Anna Nyqvist.
On Tuesday afternoon last week, the authority received information from Nynäshamn Municipality, which had discovered the error, but only began investigating the error on Thursday.
The Election Authority has called the party secretaries of the parliamentary parties to a meeting on Monday to provide information regarding the incorrect early voting.
