Response to interpellation 2023/24:823 on the possibility of protecting elections from anonymous influence
Translated from Swedish by AI; the translation may contain errors. The Swedish text is the original.
Summary AI, written in advance
The debate concerns the possibility of protecting elections from anonymous influence. M believes that the Swedish electoral system is robust as vote reception and vote counting occur manually and publicly 1. M emphasizes that the right to anonymity is constitutionally protected 2, but that politicians have a responsibility for an open and objective dialogue 2 3. M does not want to see anonymous accounts from any parties 4 and argues that methods criticized previously were introduced by S 4. M wants the conditions for the parties' participation to be decided in the Riksdag, not through decree 4. S emphasizes the importance of free and democratic elections and the opposition to troll accounts 5.
Written by AI in advance and may contain errors. The numbers lead to the speech a statement builds on; check against the text below.
Justitieministern Gunnar Strömmer (M)
Mr. Speaker! Anders Ygeman has asked me how I intend to act to ensure that hate, threats and disinformation from anonymous accounts do not affect the upcoming elections.
There are very strong reasons to counter improper information influence, something that the spread of disinformation and rumors in social media can be examples of. We know that it poses threats to whether elections can be conducted in a secure and fair manner. Ultimately, it can also affect the trust in the entire electoral system and thus for the democratic legitimacy of the elections. Therefore, it is also a high-priority issue for the government to ensure the security of the general elections held in our country.
First and foremost, I want to emphasize that the Swedish electoral system is robust and that the possibilities to manipulate the election results are extremely limited. The receipt of votes and the vote counting are carried out manually in local electoral districts in all municipalities. Furthermore, all vote counting is public, both when the ballots are counted for the first time in the municipalities and when they are recounted by the county administrative boards before the result is finalized. That the election administration is decentralized in this way, with a shared responsibility between authorities at local, regional, and national levels, contributes to making the system robust and legally secure.
After several reports of attempts to negatively influence the perception of the Swedish electoral system, a parliamentary committee was appointed during 2020 and given a mandate to submit proposals to strengthen confidence in the electoral system and strengthen its resilience against manipulations. The committee submitted a number of proposals, including that the Election Authority (Valmyndigheten) should be given an overall and unifying responsibility for security issues in the election administration. The proposals have been referred and are currently being prepared in the Government Offices.
Parallel to this, the Election Authority has since October 2021 been operating a national election network in cooperation with the County Administrative Boards, the Swedish Police Authority, the Swedish Security Service, the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency and the Psychological Defence Agency. The Election Authority is also part of a European election network with authorities from other member states, who exchange experiences and knowledge on, for example, data protection and cybersecurity. In all general elections since the election to the European Parliament in 2019, the Election Authority has also provided a service for voluntary incident reporting for all actors involved in election administration, all in order to be able to identify and manage threats that can disrupt the conduct of elections.
Regarding the issue of disinformation on the internet, there are now both binding rules and voluntary commitments from the major internet platforms. Through the regulation on a single market for digital services, the so-called DSA Regulation, the very large platforms must perform risk assessments which include the risk of them being used for coordinated disinformation campaigns or election manipulation.
Many internet platforms have also, in the European Code of Practice on Disinformation, committed to cooperating and coordinating their work during elections, when the threat from disinformation campaigns is particularly great. The signatories to the Code of Practice have, for example, established a rapid response system to ensure rapid and effective cooperation between platforms, fact-checkers, and civil society organizations during election periods.
Safeguarding and protecting our general elections is an extremely important and prioritized issue. Swedish democracy and the electoral system are based on the principles of free formation of opinion and of universal and equal suffrage. All voters shall be able to vote without being subjected to coercion or other undue influence. The Government therefore follows the ongoing developments, and several Swedish authorities cooperate both nationally and within the EU to safeguard our electoral processes.
Anders Ygeman (S)
Mr. Speaker! I would like to begin by thanking the Minister for the answer. When one listens to it, it can however be interpreted as that the question is asked somewhat generally, without any specific background. But that is not the case.
The background is TV4's investigation, where the Justice Minister's own government's largest party, Sverigedemokraterna, has been caught systematically using anonymous troll accounts. It is a working method that all other Swedish parliamentary parties reject and which the Prime Minister himself has described as dangerous. Despite this, neither Sverigedemokraterna nor TV4 are mentioned with a single word in the Justice Minister's response.
Using anonymous and fake accounts aims to deceive the Swedish people and the Swedish voters. To pose as someone other than who one actually is and give the impression that many more are encompassed by an opinion than is actually the case is a working method that authoritarian regimes and movements have used for a long time. The most well-known are, perhaps, Putin's troll armies in Saint Petersburg.
A review of the troll factory's activities – the Swedish one, that is – also shows that several of the messages that have been spread correspond with the narratives that have been used by Russian troll factories to destabilize Europe. A staff member in the Sweden Democrats' troll factory has furthermore been revealed to have spread Russian propaganda on social media.
It gets even worse when this fraud is financed by tax money through party support and municipal party support. It is support intended to broaden the understanding of local democracy but which is instead funneled and used centrally to undermine democracy and free elections.
The largest party in the government base has since the scandal was revealed signaled that it not only disregards the rules of the game one has in the government cooperation but also the rules we have set up to be a functioning democracy. Jimmie Åkesson's defense of the method and wild accusations against free independent media show what an extreme party Sverigedemokraterna is.
After these revelations, we demanded that the Prime Minister should get to the bottom of this and how this can affect the democratic conversation and Swedish election campaigns. We proposed a long series of measures, all of which have been rejected by the government. Instead, Ulf Kristersson and the government were content with two employees switching desks with each other and toasting with Pommac - relocation and values course, in the Sweden Democrats' terminology.
The question remains after the revelations how many more examples there are. How many troll accounts do the Sverigedemokraterna control that have not been revealed by TV4?
Since the first revelation, more than twice as many Sweden Democrat troll accounts have been exposed. In a report from one of the platforms, it is stated that the creation of inauthentic accounts to artificially amplify narratives in Swedish was beneficial for the Sweden Democrats and their agenda. Furthermore, the report states that the network created misleading profiles, including accounts that posed as belonging to government agencies.
What does it do to the integrity of the authorities and the election that the largest party in the government constellation falsely poses as authorities and spreads political propaganda online?
Mr. Speaker! My questions to the Minister for Justice remain. Will the Minister for Justice take a single measure to prevent the largest party in the government constellation from falsely posing as authorities? Will the Minister for Justice take a single measure to shut down the troll factories? Will the Minister for Justice take a single measure to prevent tax money paid out to strengthen democracy instead being used to undermine it?
Justitieministern Gunnar Strömmer (M)
Mr. Speaker! The question that Anders Ygeman has posed in the interpellation reads: "How does the Minister intend to act to ensure that hate, threats and disinformation from anonymous accounts do not affect upcoming elections?" I have set out in detail the work that the government and state authorities are carrying out and which is dedicated to safeguarding the integrity and security of our general elections.
For the sake of the matter, it may still be worth reminding that the right to be anonymous is actually an important element in our democracy. It is a right that is protected in our fundamental laws. It concerns everything from the secrecy of the ballot to the right to raise issues in the debate without necessarily saying who one is.
But with that said, it is my conviction that all of us who work politically, and especially as representatives for parties in the Swedish Riksdag, have a responsibility to contribute to ensuring that the democratic dialogue is as open, clear, and objective as possible. This is also a view that the Prime Minister has expressed, as have several other representatives for my party Moderaterna, both here in the Riksdag chamber and in other contexts. It is also a position that I stand by and account for even today.
Since I cannot imagine that this is a debate that Anders Ygeman wants to raise only in relation to the Sverigedemokraterna, but rather believes that it is the broad public interest regarding the integrity of the electoral system that is the subject of today's debate, I want to emphasize that it is extraordinarily central to our democracy that the high trust in the electoral system is maintained. Elections shall be free and secret. Elections shall be conducted and the electoral system structured in such a way that citizens can vote in a secure and safe manner.
Regarding this summer's election to the European Parliament, the Election Authority assesses that the conduct of the election nationally, i.e., here in Sweden, was calm and orderly. According to the EU Agency for Cybersecurity, cyber activities did not affect the EU election in any significant way.
We naturally cannot lean back because of this. In my response, I have also accounted for a number of legislative processes and security measures that we are now working on nationally and at the EU level. The Government takes these issues most seriously. We are, of course, following the developments closely and continuously.
Anders Ygeman (S)
Mr. Speaker! Well aware that one is not allowed to use props in the chamber, I nevertheless want to hold up the very interpellation that we are now discussing. The question is, quite rightly, as Gunnar Strömmer says, posed as such. But to get to the question, one must get through two items that concern precisely TV4's review in Kalla fakta and about the Sweden Democrats, me being, as far as I know, the only party that has been shut out from accounts on several platforms, the only party that has pretended to be an authority in order to thereby try to win political advantages, and the only party that has had many accounts created by troll factories shut down. It is against that background that we are discussing this.
The Minister of Justice devotes a significantly larger part of the answer to the mechanical voting system in Sweden – that we count votes manually and openly. I share that view. If this is not stated, not a single letter of it is in the interpellation. Despite that, and despite the fact that the Minister of Justice has had ten minutes at his disposal, it is as if the TV4 scandal never took place. It is about the actual threat to free and democratic elections and about the fact that there are strong forces using fake accounts to influence Swedish democracy, but it is as if this has not happened.
It is against that background that one should see that the Minister for Justice is not prepared to take a single measure to close the troll factories, against the use of fake accounts to influence Swedish democracy, or against the use of tax money that has been given to parties to strengthen democracy for the purpose of instead weakening it.
Gunnar Strömmer has a number of minutes left in this interpellation debate. It would still be pleasant if he could tell us whether any action is planned at the Government Offices and the Ministry of Justice to prevent this threat to Swedish democracy so that we can go to elections in two years without the largest party in the government constellation using fake accounts and troll factories to influence Swedish voters.
Justitieministern Gunnar Strömmer (M)
Mr. Speaker! I and Anders Ygeman have had the pleasure of discussing these issues earlier. I said then and I say again that I think this is a very pressing debate. I think the questions are serious, and this has also been reflected in the reactions from both the Prime Minister as well as other representatives for the government and, for that matter, representatives for different parties, not least my own.
I find it difficult to take the accusations from the Social Democrats seriously because all the methods—I was about to say—that are intended to poison the political conversation in Sweden in some way have been introduced by the Social Democrats. We have previously mentioned the examples from both the party office on Sveavägen and SSU, even though they are set back a number of years. I remember that I also mentioned the systematic blackening of Fredrik Reinfeldt, with allegations and rumor-mongering that I have no intention of repeating here in the chamber. This does not prevent the questions we are discussing from being extraordinarily central. Perhaps it would justify a somewhat higher degree of humility in the allegations being hurled in the other direction in this debate.
On behalf of the Moderates, I can say that the Moderates, that is, do not engage in using anonymous accounts. We are very clear about where we stand on those issues.
I also think that in Sweden it has been a very important principled and democratically extraordinarily central position not to use the power of government against individual parties or, for that matter, to seriously limit individual parties' conditions to form opinion without the critical scrutiny of this occurring through an open debate of the type that we have here in the chamber today.
These types of questions have also been discussed in the parliamentary context. It is in the Riksdag and through the interaction between the Riksdag's parties that any measures in this area shall be worked out and agreed upon. I know that such discussions occur, and I do not intend to anticipate them.
I also want to say that it is clear that it is possible to demand powerful measures with the full weight of the executive power behind them. I note that some of the proposals that have come from the Social Democrats have been rejected very clearly, not by the government but instead by experts on, for example, freedom of expression, who all share their disgust when it comes to the existence of this type of tool but who, for example, from democratic starting points have problematized proposals such as that everyone should use BankID to access their accounts on social media or elsewhere.
Let us therefore agree that all political parties in Sweden's Riksdag have a responsibility to safeguard a factual, clear debate, regarding both the content of the debate and the senders. From my and the Moderaternas point of view, the message is very clear: We do not want to see any anonymous accounts from any parties in the Swedish debate. We are undoubtedly prepared to continue working for this in various ways. On the other hand, I think it is reasonable that the conditions for the Riksdag's parties' participation in the democratic process are decided here in the Riksdag, not through decrees from the Government Offices. The executive power should keep a proper distance from the internal affairs of the individual parties.
Anders Ygeman (S)
Mr. Speaker! Even though it may sometimes sound in this debate as if the Minister of Justice and I are not in agreement – and regarding some things we are not – I must nevertheless point out that we agree on most of what the Minister of Justice presents in the debate: the importance of free and democratic elections and the opposition to troll accounts and other matters.
But it still becomes a bit strange when the Minister for Justice says that government power should not be used against individual parties and that no parties should use fake accounts, when the same Government Offices have devoted a great deal of time to trying to prevent a party from using lotteries instead of party funding to finance its activities, which the same referral bodies that the Minister for Justice just mentioned have completely rejected, and then do not have a single measure against that party in the own government constellation that has systematically used fake accounts and even pretended to be an authority.
I have absolutely nothing against discussing ten or twenty-year-old Social Democratic missteps and distancing ourselves from them. But they cannot be compared on the same day to the fact that the government constellation's largest party has an information chief and an information department that systematically use fake accounts and have furthermore claimed that these do not exist. In the debate that the Minister for Justice referred to, which we had here some months ago, the Sverigedemokraterna representative, the party secretary, said that there was not a single account – everything had come out in TV4. Since then, twice as many accounts have been revealed.
Despite this, not a single measure from the Ministry of Justice is planned to rectify this.
Justitieministern Gunnar Strömmer (M)
Mr. Speaker! Let me state what has been the foundation today and what has been the case from the Prime Minister earlier this year and from other representatives both for the government and for my own party, the Moderates.
Even though anonymity is an indispensable element in our democracy – the secrecy of the ballot and the possibility to form opinion without stating who one is are fundamental elements in a free and open society – it is my and the Moderates' conviction that everyone who works politically, especially as representatives for parliamentary parties, has a responsibility to ensure that the democratic conversation is as open, clear, and objective as possible. This applies to both content and sender, that is to say, anonymous accounts have no place, I argue and we do, in Swedish democracy. It is a position that we have consistently expressed and that we stand by today.
I also mean that it is very important that the conditions for the parties regarding opinion-forming are also handled in the processes that are ongoing here in the Riksdag. We have, for example, appointed a parliamentary commission of inquiry which largely concerns the conditions for the parties and the parties' opinion-forming and so on.
I also want to say, since it was the question after all, that it is extraordinarily central that the high trust in the electoral system is maintained. I note with pleasure that the European Parliament election, which was carried out temporally in connection with the revelation that Anders Ygeman refers to, has been conducted calmly and as planned. There is nothing from either our authorities or from authorities at the EU level that suggests that the EU election would have been influenced in any significant way.
We do not lean back because of this, but we continue to work to safeguard the integrity, safety, and security of Swedish democracy and the electoral system.
Source: The Swedish Parliament. The speeches come from the open data of the Riksdag, translated into English by AI, which may contain errors.