Missing ballot papers drive more than 2,800 election incident reports

More than 2,800 incident reports have been submitted to Sweden’s election authority, with most concerning ballot papers that were moved, hidden or removed, SVT reports. Videos on social media have described missing ballots as election fraud, but the reports do not show how many cases were deliberate.

In one video from a voting location, Nils Littorin, leader of Malmölistan, says the party’s ballot papers are missing.

“Then we are documenting election fraud,” he says in the TikTok video, which has received more than 25,000 likes.

In another video posted on X, Aday Bethkinne, leader of the Christian Family Party, shows a ballot-paper stand without the party’s papers.

“This is clearly election interference,” he says. The video has been viewed nearly 74,000 times.

The election authority says ballot papers can be missing for several reasons. Voters may have moved or removed them, supplies may have run out, or the parties may not yet have delivered them. Voting officials may also not have had time to put them out, or may have forgotten to do so.

The incident reports are used to monitor problems and risks during the election and include both suspected incidents and ordinary mistakes.

Criticism targets ballot distribution

There is also criticism of how ballot papers are handled. All parties must deliver their own candidate-list ballots. The election administration helps some parties with party-list ballots, while smaller and newer parties may have to distribute large quantities themselves.

Critics say this gives parties different conditions. A government inquiry has therefore proposed that the election administration take responsibility for all distribution in the future.

That points to practical problems with the system, SVT reports, but does not show that anyone tried to influence the election.

Claims of election fraud linked to ballot papers also circulated during the 2018 and 2022 election campaigns, according to a report by the Swedish Defence Research Agency.

The report examined 15,400 Twitter posts collected before and after the 2022 election that contained the term “election fraud”. About 1,800 were original posts, while the rest included replies and reposts. Around 6,200 accounts took part in the discussion.

Missing ballot papers were among the most common specific election-fraud themes.