In several parts of the country, including Umeå, local media have reported queues lasting for hours.
In Umeå, the last polling station did not close until 11:03 p.m. - three hours late - to accommodate all voters who were in line.
We thought there wouldn't be any queues, because so many people voted early. It's just a shame. Because this is absolutely not how we want it to be and had planned for it to be, says Håkan Johansson (S), chairman of the election committee in Umeå municipality, to P4 Västerbotten .
"People are worried about what it will do to voter turnout. This is too poorly planned and we also hear about other districts where there is almost no queue at all," voter Jamilla Lassinantti tells the radio.
“Very boring”
The Election Authority's chief of staff, Anna Nyqvist, said earlier on election day that she could not comment on individual polling stations, but that the authority had followed reports of long queues in the media.
We think it's really sad and serious that there are such long queues. But unfortunately it's not something that was unexpected.
She believes that both the authority and the municipalities have taken "many different measures" to reduce the risk of queues.
But apparently it hasn't helped enough, said Nyqvist.
Takes time to find
The big problem is not understaffing, the authority believes, but the system for ballots inside the polling stations. It can take a long time to find among the up to 103 ballots in each rack, she says.
It simply takes time, per voter.
Nyqvist emphasized that many of the nearly 6,300 polling stations did not have long queues.
There are many municipalities that have no queues at all. But there are too many facilities that have long queues.
