Up to 500 early votes incorrectly registered

Sweden’s Election Authority has sharply lowered its estimate of voters affected by errors in the registration of early ballots, saying up to 500 people may remain impossible to identify.

The authority had previously estimated that 4,000 voters had either been marked off twice or had their votes recorded against another voter. A new analysis found that a maximum of 500 voters were likely to fall into the unidentified group, and that figure could still decrease.

The cases involve ballots that received another voter’s electoral-roll number and therefore were not registered correctly. The authority said this happened when an election worker began processing a new ballot before completing the previous voter’s registration.

“

Our analysis shows that there are a maximum of 500 voters who probably cannot be identified. That figure may decrease. This is of course very serious and must not be able to happen.

Other early votes were incorrectly recorded because some people voted early more than once, which invalidates all of their early votes. In separate cases, election workers discarded an envelope, for example because the first envelope was damaged, and used a replacement. Those envelopes are easy to distinguish, and because they were empty, the voter’s ballot was not affected.

“This is of course very serious and must not be able to happen,” Anna Nyqvist, head of the Election Authority’s office, said in a press release. She added that the authority could not contact the affected voters because it did not know who they were. It asked for patience while officials determine which polling locations and times were involved.

Nynäshamn municipality alerted the authority to the error on Tuesday afternoon last week. The authority began investigating on Thursday and has called the parliamentary parties’ secretaries to a meeting on Monday to provide information about the incorrectly registered early votes.

“

We will not be able to contact the affected voters because we do not know who they are. We therefore ask for patience while we await the opportunity to provide more information about which locations and times are covered.