On Monday, information emerged that the National Unit Against Corruption had launched a preliminary investigation into suspected election fraud in Dalarna.
The alleged crime involves marked ballots in the parliamentary elections and, according to an anonymous police report, people allegedly drove voters and provided them with marked ballots.
Joakim Nergelius, whose research areas include Swedish and comparative constitutional law as well as EU law, points out that the case is very unusual, even though there have been reports in connection with parliamentary elections of parties trying to influence potential votes in, for example, retirement homes.
This story is different because it is about personal elections and not just voting for a party but also ticking names on the ballot, he tells TT.
I've never heard of that before.
No crime
Driving someone to a polling station or handing out ballots is not a crime, points out Joakim Nergelius. However, offering financial compensation for voting for a certain person or party is.
Then it is a crime and then it is not the voter's free will that decides.
The personal vote form was introduced in June 1998 to give voters the opportunity to vote for a specific candidate with the intention of giving more power to the voters. However, Nergelius sees challenges with the current system:
"You would get closer contact between voters and elected officials, and it's a complete failure when only eight members out of 349 manage to get in," he says.
In a smaller constituency, relatively few personal votes are sufficient to be elected to the Riksdag.
I think the entire personal voting system in Sweden is a failure.
Future consequences
He also fears that the incident in Dalarna could have future consequences:
This story may open people's eyes to the fact that this paves the way for cheating when people realize how easy it is to get caught, he says.
What should be done instead?
Either we have a more consistent system for personal voting, like we have in Germany, for example, or we abolish it altogether, because it serves no purpose as it is now.
