Swedish parties summoned after 4,000 advance votes recorded incorrectly

Swedish parliamentary parties have been called to a meeting after a technical error affected up to 4,000 advance votes, public broadcaster SVT reports.

The Swedish Election Authority has invited the party secretaries of the parliamentary parties to a meeting on Monday to brief them on the situation. The authority is working to identify the voters affected, its press secretary Jany Plevnik told SVT.

The error in the authority’s IT system meant that some voters were either registered twice or had their vote recorded under another voter’s name. It affected polling stations in almost all municipalities and was discovered on Friday before being stopped overnight.

The Election Authority said there were no indications of external interference and that voters are now being registered correctly. It has a theory about how the error occurred and described it as a software fault that had been fixed.

Votes that cannot be linked to the correct voter will be rejected. The authority advises concerned advance voters to take no action for now and wait for further information. It expects to know more at the beginning of next week.

About 1.4 million people have voted in advance so far.