Anna Nyqvist says they have 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 says that both the authority and the municipalities have taken "a great many different measures" to reduce the risk of queues.
But obviously it hasn't helped enough, says Nyqvist.
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 emphasizes that many of the nearly 6,300 polling stations do not have long queues.
There are many municipalities that have no queues at all. But there are too many facilities that have long queues.
