Election issues

Susanne Nordström (M)

Madam Speaker! Today we are debating the report KU12 Election Issues. I would like to begin by moving for the approval of the committee's proposal in the report. In this report, there are various issues concerning elections, and I will choose to focus on one specific issue.

Elections are an election campaign, a swarm of political issues, debates, contradictions, agenda-setting and not least the profiling of candidates. That is how we are used to it looking every four years, and perhaps also every five years, when it is the EU election. General elections are fine. It is democratic. When it is an election campaign, it is intense. This is known at least by those of us who sit in this house.

In Sweden, we trust our electoral system. Thankfully, electoral fraud and manipulation of elections are extremely rare in our country. Can elections then be undemocratic? And what do we mean by undemocratic elections? That the wrong person wins in Mello or that the wrong party wins in an election is something that happens—no comparison otherwise. I usually say that you get the politicians you deserve, because you yourself have been involved in voting them in. Or as my colleague in KU Ulrik Nilsson so wisely expressed it: It is only in democracies that one can lose elections.

Madam Speaker! Do we get the politicians we vote for, or do we not? To be eligible for a seat in the Riksdag, one must be registered as a resident in Sweden. For elections to regions, one must be registered as a resident in the region where one stands for election. For municipalities, the exact same rules apply; you must be registered as a resident in the municipality where you are elected. The voters want to know that the candidates on the ballot paper that has been placed in the ballot box are correct, not just on election day but when the County Administrative Board has verified the election result.

It was among these things that we members of the Committee on the Constitution could observe in our election follow-up group. Let me tell you more. It has indeed been observed that one can run for several municipalities or regions simultaneously and then subsequently register one's residence in the municipality or region where one has the greatest chance of being elected. This has been noted by both the Election Review Board and the Election Authority, and now also by KU.

The Swedish Tax Agency has an e-service for changing an address in the population register or changing the place of registration. It is a good service that is open every day, around the clock.

Election issues

Furthermore, the Population Registration Act allows the date on which the population registration shall take effect to be moved forward by one week from the day the notification is made. This can, of course, be practical and serve a certain function for some people. It may be a much-needed opportunity in every way, but the big question here and now is whether it is reasonable from a democratic perspective.

Madam Speaker! We can look closer at this from a voter's perspective, that is, this matter of being able to change one's registered municipality in connection with election day. We can play with the idea and say, purely hypothetically, that Valfrid Botesson – I have googled the name; there is no one named that – is a charming, competent, and accommodating person whom many in the small municipality A think is worth casting their vote for, and so they do. But what the residents in municipality A do not know is that the little rascal Valfrid is on municipal ballots in more municipalities, in both B and C. After the election, it turns out that it did not go so well for Valfrid's party in municipality A, but well in municipality B, so Valfrid changes his registered residence there.

I mean that in the Stryktipset you can hedge your bets with a 1, a cross, or a 2, but in a municipal election you have to decide which ballot you are going to stand on.

The speech at riksdagen.se, in Swedish (opens in a new tab)

Hans Ekström (S)

Madam Speaker! The electoral system may sound technical and boring, but it is an important cornerstone of a stable democracy. That people can trust that elections are conducted correctly is a prerequisite for the election result to have legitimacy and for people to feel that those who have been elected have been elected in the right way.

It is also important with recognition. Different countries have different traditions for how elections are conducted. A Swedish voter who comes to England would not recognize it, because there they have a personal vote system in single-member constituencies - a completely different system. In Sweden, we have lists with several candidates. In Finland, all candidates are listed with numbers. One votes for a person, and so it also indirectly becomes a party vote. They are different systems.

In every country, the system that one has feels like the obvious one. If the system changes significantly all at once, it creates great confusion, and the voters will not feel legitimacy regarding the election result. Therefore, a caution is required from us politicians when we change the electoral system. It should be done in small steps and in broad political agreement. If we carry out a major change of the electoral system in political confrontation, we also undermine the legitimacy of democracy.

Mainly, the Swedish system has delivered reliable results with great legitimacy. This is something we should be careful about. A question that has grown is the one that Susanne Nordström touched upon, namely the question of where one can run for candidacy. Can one, for example, run in several different municipalities or constituencies as a parliamentary candidate? This seems unreasonable, and it is good that the Committee on the Constitution unanimously announces to the government that this should be investigated.

A question that has long been raised and which was driven with great zeal by the Liberals when they were in opposition is the possibility for the visually impaired to vote. It is naturally very problematic if it is difficult for this group to maintain the secrecy of the ballot. In that case, one must look at the new technical solutions that exist to find a good solution for the visually impaired. This is not entirely simple, but it is important to move forward.

One thing that can reduce voter turnout is long queues and waiting times. Here, the municipalities and their election committees have a great responsibility to ensure that there are enough polling stations with sufficient capacity. We have also made changes to how the ballot paper locations are organized, which has created confusion in some places. Even here, changes can be made in small steps to make the electoral system function more smoothly.

I vote in favor of reservation 1.

The speech at riksdagen.se, in Swedish (opens in a new tab)

Malin Björk (C)

Madam Speaker! On June 9, it is time once again to go to the polls to cast your vote for one of the parties and one of the candidates running in this year's election to the European Parliament.

I have said it several times during this spring, including in my speeches here in the rostrum, but I am happy to repeat myself and say it again: It is an important choice we have ahead of us. It is important for Sweden, important for Europe, and important for Sweden's place and role in the European community. Therefore, it is important that each one of us who has the right to vote in this election takes advantage of this right.

This is so important that I actually wish to see a rerun of what happened when we went to the election last time, in September 2022, and by that I mean a rerun of what we saw on election day itself outside many of the country's polling stations. There, the queues were long with voters who patiently waited for their turn to cast their vote.

If we get a turnout as high as the last time it happened - just over 84 percent in the parliamentary election on September 11, 2022 - such scenes will unfold again on June 9 this year. Then we will see long, winding queues of voters waiting more or less patiently for their turn to vote.

The voter turnout in the last EU election, which took place in 2019, was however at 55 percent, so it is perhaps somewhat utopian of me to imagine a repetition of what happened on September 11, 2022. In the name of honesty, these are scenes that we actually do not want to see again - those enormously long queues where it happened that people left because they actually did not have time to wait for their turn.

Such a thing is, of course, nothing to strive for. It is, however, a high voter turnout - absolutely - but we hardly get this by having citizens forced to stand in hour-long queues to cast their vote. Nor do we get it by having the person who has had the patience to wait and then steps into the voting booth, where they are met by a complete jumble of ballots, where it can be quite difficult to find the right one.

Madam Speaker! I just mentioned that just over 84 percent of the country's eligible voters cast their vote in the 2022 parliamentary election. That is a high figure in an international comparison, but it was a decrease of a full 3 percentage points compared to the parliamentary election before that, i.e., 2018. We are probably all here in agreement that such a clear decline in voter turnout is not good.

In order to succeed in reversing this downward trend, we must ensure that it becomes easy to do the right thing. The electoral system itself must be robust. The voters who go to the ballot boxes must understand how to proceed once they are on site, so that they can be confident that the vote they wish to cast truly ends up where it is supposed to.

Before the 2022 election, new rules had been introduced to strengthen the protection of the secrecy of the vote, and this meant that even the places where ballot papers were available for collection were screened off. This entailed, to say the least, major logistical challenges in the polling stations, which some here have been involved in previously, and caused the procedure inside the polling station to take longer for the voter, which in turn led to queueing.

At the bottom of all these problems also lies the mire of ballot papers that I mentioned just now, i.e., the ballot paper system itself. When we stood here in the chamber a year ago and debated the report on Electoral Issues, I asserted that we must ensure that the ballot paper system is changed in time for the 2026 election, in order to remedy what we saw happen at the 2022 election.

Centerpartiet had a reservation in the report on electoral issues that KU submitted last year, and there we urged the government to promptly appoint an inquiry with a mandate to review how a new ballot system can be designed. I am pleased to see that this has now occurred.

A parliamentary committee has been appointed to see if it is time to abolish the current system of party-specific ballots and replace it with common or neutral ballots. The investigation is to report on its mandate in September 2025, that is, one year before the next parliamentary election.

Nothing will of course be able to be changed until the upcoming election to the European Parliament on June 9, so until election day I choose to hold fast to my image of winding queues outside the country's polling stations in a carefree Sweden where all our citizens not only content themselves with being Swedish but see themselves as self-evident EU citizens.

The speech at riksdagen.se, in Swedish (opens in a new tab)

Fredrik Lindahl (SD)

Madam Speaker! I would like to begin by moving for approval of the Sweden Democrats' reservation 3 in the Committee on the Constitution's report 12 regarding electoral issues.

Madam Speaker! We are approaching the middle of the parliamentary term, and in a few weeks, there will be elections to the European Parliament. It is therefore both logical and appropriate that we bring the election issues onto the agenda again.

It is a motion report that we are dealing with today, but it has an annex from the Constitutional Committee's election follow-up group. The KU decided in May last year to appoint a group within the committee consisting of a representative from each party with the task of carrying out a follow-up of the 2022 election.

The group chose to highlight the following issues in the follow-up: formal requirements for appeals, reporting of incidents and complaints, the Election Review Board's administrative organization and resources, as well as electoral integrity and the legitimacy of general elections.

All of the Riksdag's parties stand behind the content and the views in the report. In my opinion, this is positive as it strengthens the report's parliamentary weight. In my capacity as chairperson of the election follow-up group, I would like to thank all participating members for your contribution and for all the constructive discussions we have had during our work.

In my speech, I will take the opportunity to mention some of the observations and reflections that the group has noted. Similar to what was stated during the committee's previous follow-up, it is important to take advantage of the public's engagement to improve regulations and procedures within election administration. If incidents are reported and handled directly, it would be possible to correct deviations and deficiencies while an election is ongoing. That is not the case if complaints only arrive in the form of an appeal.

If we can effectively compile incidents highlighted by Valmyndigheten, Valprövningsnämnden, and the municipal election committees, one can simultaneously gain an overview of which parts of the electoral system are not functioning as intended. Sverigedemokraterna believe that with national coordination during and after an election, one can identify vulnerabilities that could improperly affect the election result.

But it is also important that the body that formally handles appeals receives the administrative support needed for the work to be carried out efficiently but also in a legally secure manner. Since the number of appeals increased so significantly at the 2018 election, there was a need for a new approach.

Information initiatives regarding which authorities are responsible for what is an important measure that supports the public. For a voter, it can be far from obvious where to turn and when to do so. With, for example, contact forms and clear information, the proportion of cases that end up in the wrong place can be reduced, and formal appeals of elections can be submitted within the correct time period and with the correct documentation so that the Election Review Board can make well-founded decisions and rulings.

The new legislation to strengthen the voters' protection during the receipt of votes and the protection of the secrecy of the ballot with requirements for screens for the ballot papers has achieved its purpose, but it has been very challenging for the municipalities in the form of queues. Here it is important that the election committees draw lessons from the experiences of the 2022 election and ensure that they adapt the areas for the placement of enough ballot paper and voting booths to effectively be able to handle the heavy flow of voting. In that respect, the group notes that the ballot paper system is now also to be reviewed.

The Sweden Democrats have for a long time been advocates for a ballot reform. It is therefore pleasing that we have reached an agreement with the government on this issue in the form of the Tidö Agreement. As a result of this agreement, the government decided on 15 February 2024 that a parliamentarily composed committee shall evaluate and consider changes to the electoral system, including the pros and cons of transitioning to a system with common or neutral ballots.

It is a broad review of the electoral system that the committee will carry out. An evaluation of the ballot system with party-specific ballots will be examined, and an international overview will be made. In particular, it shall analyze and assess how common or neutral ballots would affect the conditions for, among other things, persons with functional impairments, for example visual impairments, to participate in the elections on equal terms.

The Committee on the Constitution proposes a notice. Both the Election Authority and the Election Review Board, in their experience reports from the 2022 elections, have raised the issue of a candidate's eligibility and population registration in elections to regional and municipal councils since at least one candidate registered their residence after election day in the municipality where the candidate could subsequently be elected. This was possible thanks to the flexibility that the Population Registration Act allows regarding the retroactive change of one's registered address. It is obvious to most that this was not the intention of the Local Government Act's requirements for eligibility to municipal and regional councils.

The Committee shares the authorities' view that it should not be possible for a person who has run in more than one municipality or region to change their civil registration on election day or in connection with election day for the purpose of becoming eligible and elected. A unanimous KU therefore wishes to issue a referral to the Government, based on one of the Sverigedemokraterna's committee motions, to investigate the issue.

In conclusion: Following another announcement from the previous parliamentary term in report 2021/22:KU6, the Ministry of Justice has recently referred the memorandum Biträde to the voters. In the memorandum, amendments to the electoral act are proposed, which mean that a voting official must always be present when a voter, due to a functional disability or similar, hires an assistant to prepare their votes or take ballots. For the Sverigedemokraterna, which was one of the parties that submitted a committee motion in this area, this is obviously very pleasing.

Poll workers are, as is known, subject to a duty of confidentiality and criminal liability in order to protect the secrecy of the vote. The Sweden Democrats want this duty of confidentiality to also cover voting assistants, because voters who need to take help from others to vote are often the group in society that is absolutely most vulnerable. We believe that further safeguards should be established to protect their right to the secrecy of the vote.

The speech at riksdagen.se, in Swedish (opens in a new tab)

Gudrun Brunegård (KD)

Madam Speaker! In this debate, we are handling a number of motions in the Committee on the Constitution's report, but the report also includes the experience reports from the Election Authority and the Election Review Board, as well as proposals from the Committee on the Constitution's valuation group, which some previous speakers have touched upon.

Initially, I note that a unanimous Committee on the Constitution proposes a motion to the Government to investigate an issue regarding eligibility and population registration. It should not be possible for a person to run in several municipalities and then retroactively, after election day, change their population registration to be elected where they have received sufficient support.

The Election Authority and many municipalities point out the problem with the queues that arose at the polling stations as a consequence of the screened-off ballot stations. We noted this at one of the polling stations, also in my home municipality Vimmerby, where I sat on the election committee during the previous parliamentary term.

The government decided on 15 February this year to appoint a parliamentarially composed committee to evaluate and consider changes to the ballot system. The work shall include analyzing the advantages and disadvantages of transitioning to a system with common or neutral ballots. I have seen examples of this in Lithuania and in South Korea.

I also want to raise the issue of voters with visual impairments and other disabilities. The right to vote and the right to secrecy of the vote also apply to them, of course. At present, such a person has the right to receive help from a poll clerk or someone they themselves hire to take the ballot paper they wish to use. Poll clerks have a duty of confidentiality.

The Committee on the Constitution has previously made a recommendation to the government, which the Riksdag has supported, that voters with visual impairments should be able to vote personally without being forced to reveal the secrecy of the vote to anyone. In the investigation mentioned, it needs to be analyzed how alternative ballot systems can affect the conditions for persons with disabilities to vote.

With this, I would like, Madam Speaker, to move for the adoption of the consideration and the rejection of the motions.

The speech at riksdagen.se, in Swedish (opens in a new tab)

Jan Riise (MP)

Madam Speaker! The report on Election Issues deals with about 40 motions from the general motion period 2023/24. That work has been supplemented with a follow-up of the 2022 election which the committee conducted in a group that specifically looked at, among other things, incidents, appeals, and eligibility, especially in the municipal elections. A recurring issue within Miljöpartiet concerns the voting age, and I shall say something about that just in a moment.

First, I want to say that we support the committee's announcement to investigate the connection between eligibility and population registration. It is unreasonable and could never have been the intention that it should be possible to choose a place of population registration after the election results begin to be known. It is a loophole that simply needs to be closed.

I also note that the motions raised regarding the ballot system are proposed to be dismissed pending the investigation work that is underway, which seems reasonable.

It is also important to improve the opportunities for Swedes living abroad to exercise their right to vote. Improved information, not least regarding which rules apply for postal votes, can be a contribution. There is room for improvements here, one might think. The committee assumes that the government continues this work.

The work to make it possible for voters with visual impairments to vote while maintaining secrecy of the vote should, of course, also continue. Part of that work is the design of ballot papers, which are currently under investigation.

Madam Speaker! Democracy is threatened in many parts of the world, and the situation is worsening year by year. Democracy needs to be developed, anchored, and broadened instead. This can happen in many different ways, including by including more young people. In countries such as Austria, Scotland, Malta, Argentina, Brazil, and Ecuador, 16-year-olds are allowed to vote, as are parts of the USA, Germany, and Estonia. Those who are skeptical about lowering the voting age often question whether young people are mature enough to vote, while others, such as the Prime Minister in the weekend's party leader debate on TV, argue that the right to vote is related to the age of majority.

In a recently published scientific article, a group of German researchers write about a survey based on more than 10,000 young adults in Germany. The research team's starting point was to estimate the effects of the right to vote on how the youth sought information. It turned out that the right to vote in itself might not have any significance for political positions, but it made a big difference in terms of political discussions and using voter support in the form of apps of various kinds, for example, voting compasses. It appears, the researchers write, that this is even more pronounced for 16-year-olds than for 18-year-olds. The right to vote thus changes the behavior. That is a quite important conclusion.

It is therefore not possible to conclude that it is inappropriate for those who today do not have the right to vote because they are too young to be granted the right to vote. On the contrary, it can be an asset both for them themselves and for democracy. Within Miljöpartiet, we believe that it is high time for a reduction even in Sweden and that the voting age should be lowered to 16 years in municipal, regional, and parliamentary elections. A pilot project at the municipal level should be able to be initiated.

It was in the year 1909 that universal suffrage for men was introduced. The voting age was then 24 years. In 2021, it was 100 years since women could for the first time exercise their right to vote. The voting age was lowered successively during the century. In 1945 it was lowered to 21 years, 20 years later to 20 years, and then in 1975 to today's voting age, 18 years. Soon it will have been half a century since then.

We believe it is time for a further reduction in order to broaden and strengthen democracy. It is important for several reasons, including that every other young person does not feel included in society and that most experience that they do not have influence over political decision-making. At the same time, we see how young people engage in important social issues, for example, the climate issue. We also see advantages with most attending upper secondary school with good opportunities for acquiring knowledge in the year they get to vote for the first time. Young people want to be involved and have an influence!

We believe that lowering the voting age provides an opportunity to be practically introduced to the democratic infrastructure at an early age, which, in addition to the democratic value in itself, can also strengthen cohesion and respect for society's fundamental values. We are convinced that young people's trust in the political system - and in social institutions in general - would increase if they are allowed to participate in it.

The Democracy Inquiry, which submitted its report in 2016, proposed that a pilot project with a voting age of 16 years should be carried out at local elections, something that has not yet become a reality. The average age for first-time voters in Sweden is today 20 years, and it is Europe's highest. With a reduction to 16 years as the voting age, this average age would be lowered to 18 years. We have from the Miljöpartiets side previously motioned on this, and I intend that we will return with updated knowledge, experiences, and proposals at an appropriate time.

The speech at riksdagen.se, in Swedish (opens in a new tab)

Malin Danielsson (L)

Mr. Speaker! In just a few weeks, early voting for the EU election begins, and on June 9 is the election day itself. Then, 7.6 million Swedes will have the opportunity to decide who shall have the honor of taking the 21 seats that Sweden has in the European Parliament.

It is not only the EU that is going to elections this year; 2024 is a super election year. Half of the world's population is estimated to have the opportunity to vote in one of the elections planned in 76 countries around the world. In the report we are debating right now, we handle election issues primarily from a more practical and technical perspective. What lessons can we draw from the 2022 elections? What impact did the queues that formed at certain polling stations have? Should it be possible to register one's residence in a municipality only after the election result is clear? The answer to the last question is no, as you have heard several of my colleagues say earlier.

It is also about how we ensure that persons with visual impairments can vote with maintained secrecy, if the handling of overseas votes is timely as it is today, and so on. These are important questions to ensure the election's legitimacy, but elections are so much more. It is thanks to democratic elections and peaceful transfers of power that many of us in the world now live in peace and freedom. In Sweden, we choose who shall be given the trust to govern, and every four years we have the opportunity to evaluate and see if the trust remains or if we would rather see another alternative. Dictatorships, coups d'état, and war - the alternatives to democratic elections are rarely pleasant.

Mr. Speaker! It is no longer looking good for democracy in the world. The V-Dem Institute, which annually reports on how democracy develops in the world, paints a very gloomy picture. Since 2009, the proportion of the world's population living in countries that are becoming autocratized has been larger than the proportion living in countries that are becoming democratized.

Other alarming trends are that countries are being subjected to disinformation and foreign influence. Work is being done on such issues, among other things, at the EU level, not least in view of the upcoming EU parliamentary election, where warnings about Russian disinformation are frequent. As recently as yesterday, one could read in DN that Germany and France are judged to be extra vulnerable when it comes to Russian disinformation before, during, and after the EU election, and that the reason is, among other things, that the countries are the most powerful in the EU and that they stand behind support for Ukraine, which of course is not in Russia's interest.

Mr. Speaker! Regarding the questions in the report, I would particularly like to highlight the importance of ensuring that the investigation reviewing the ballot system before upcoming elections guarantees accessibility for persons with disabilities. Just as a previous speaker has pointed out, it is a matter close to the heart of the Liberals that one should be able to vote while maintaining secrecy even if one has a visual impairment. It also concerns ensuring that persons with intellectual disabilities are provided with an easy-to-understand system. We pushed for it in opposition, and we are pushing for it now that we are in government. It is an important mission in the upcoming review of the ballot system that the voting procedure becomes simpler for persons with intellectual disabilities and that it becomes possible for persons with visual impairments to vote while maintaining secrecy.

Mr. Speaker! I want to raise another liberal pet project, even if there is no support for it in the Riksdag yet. It concerns separate election days for the parliamentary election and the municipal and regional elections.

The common election day and Sweden's four-year mandates mean that Sweden today is one of the democratic countries in the world with the longest time between elections. The common election day leads to the parliamentary election taking center stage and the regional and municipal elections often falling into the shadows, not least in regions with less media coverage of the local council elections. This is what we want to rectify through separate election days.

There are further reasons why the Swedish people would need to go to the polls on more occasions than once every four years, but I will not go into them now. I only state that I hope that, in the long run, we can have separate election days in Sweden.

I vote in favor of the committee report.

The deliberation was hereby concluded.

(A decision was to be taken on 15 May.)

The speech at riksdagen.se, in Swedish (opens in a new tab)