After the alarms about election fraud - that's how it went

On October 8, the Police Authority had received 110 reports of suspected election fraud or other irregularities in connection with voting.

It is a record high number that is expected to grow further, but if you look at the notifications more closely, the picture becomes more nuanced. A person is suspected of acting improperly when voting in Solna, north of Stockholm. But among the reports there are also a large number of incidents that are not deemed to constitute crimes.

According to the police's press service, there are still reports of election fraud, but cases are also closed. On October 8, there were 23 open cases, while 87 had either been closed or had not led to any preliminary investigation.

What has attracted the most attention in the media are allegations of electoral fraud in Järva in Stockholm and the leftist Mohamed Abdukardir Ali's personal election campaign in Borlänge. No person has yet been served with suspicion of a crime in that case and according to Joakim Nergelius, professor of jurisprudence at Örebro University, the matter may be difficult to judge legally.

- As there is a lack of practice, you don't really know how different events should be assessed. If you pay for someone to vote in a certain way, then it is election fraud and unauthorized voting, he says

At the same time, Joakim Nergelius points out that legal experts, in comments to the criminal code, have stated that it is permissible to drive someone to the polling station.

- It is perhaps even commendable, he says.

New for the 2026 election was that officials in the polling stations were obliged to report all deviations to the Electoral Authority. A large number of incident reports have been received, around 5,200 from the election administration and roughly 3,400 from the public. But that does not necessarily reflect that the vote would have been unusually messy.

Police reports of suspected electoral fraud, the large number of incident reports and allegations that leaders of religious communities encouraged members to vote for certain parties have made big headlines since the election.

One month after election day, a search for "electoral fraud" returns 2,894 hits in the Retriever media archive.

- There are many different things that are added together and for the public or the voters it is difficult, or completely impossible, to distinguish between them. In the discussions about cheating, for example, there is a lot that by definition cannot be cheating, because it is legal, says Anna Nyqvist, head of office at the Swedish Electoral Authority.

It is the Riksdag's election review committee that determines whether irregularities or administrative errors in connection with voting can be assumed to have influenced the election results. In that case, the election must be retaken where the election may have been affected.

After this year's election, the number of appeals to the election review board has skyrocketed in an unprecedented way.

After the 2022 election, the board received a little more than 400 appeals, in 2018 the number was just over 750. This time, the election review board expects to handle between 20,000 and 25,000 appeals.

- Since we haven't analyzed it yet, I don't know what's behind the appeals, but on the other hand, many are rather without substance, says Svante O Johansson, chairman of the electoral review board.

He says that many appeals only contain a few words, such as "re-election, corruption", or that the complainant claims to have heard about irregularities, or read about them on the internet.

In addition, individuals as well as interest organizations have run campaigns where the public is asked to sign to demand that the election be rerun or in other ways question the results of the various elections.

- It is clear that it affects how people act, he says.

Many of the appeals that he has had time to read contain identical writings.

- We recognize the wordings, they appear again to a large extent in the appeals.

For Anna Nyqvist, head of the Office of the Electoral Commission, there is an overarching question: Was the election fair?

- If the question is "can you trust the election results", we answer yes - you can, says Anna Nyqvist.

She develops her reasoning:

- If something has gone wrong, which it does in elections - it has done it in the past and has done it in this election - then you can appeal it to the electoral review board. They test whether it may have affected the election results and if it may have, there will be a re-election. That's a good thing.