Long queues prevented voters from voting in Umeå

She finally couldn't stand to queue any longer and was forced to go home.

- I'm older, I can't stand straight up and down for that long. My legs started shaking, she says.

Four days later, she tried again but was met with a two-hour queue.

- I sat and waited and thought that it might be moving. Finally it was 2 pm and then they closed. So I thought I got to vote on election day instead.

"Really wanted to vote"

On election day, the woman listened before she went to the polling station at the Maja Beskow school. But even then there were long queues.

- So nothing happened. There were queues everywhere. It wasn't worth leaving. I really wanted to vote. It didn't feel like fun at all.

It was the first time ever that she did not vote in an election.

- I tried to think that it will be as it will be, what is a voice. I really wanted to vote, but I'm trying to convince myself that a vote might not matter.

Long queues the most common complaint

Of the over 100 election incidents that have been reported to Umeå municipality so far, 32 of them involve long queues. Several write that they have seen others leave the queues. A parent of a small child at Carlshem writes that the hour-long queues forced her to return home several times, and that in the end she had to "abstain from voting despite wanting to vote".

The electoral board in Umeå believes that it was above all the new system of putting the ballots in the booths that slowed down voting, and that they did not change the system before election day because they thought the queues were due to a record number of early voters.

The system for reporting incidents has not existed before, so it is difficult to compare them with previous elections. The Electoral Office will go through the reports and present them to the committee that will evaluate the election and what caused the queues.