To vote or not to vote - a historical look back at electoral bribery and influence attempts

To vote or not to vote, that is the question, now as in the past.

The great proletarian writer Ivar Lo-Johansson told in his autobiographical book "Analfabeten" about his father who did not vote at all: "It was a reaction against the baronial times, when the baron used to have the subordinates brought to elections in a wagon in order to buy their votes."

Enough because there were no cars and ATMs, nor lists of personal choices or pre-crossed or completed ballot papers. Invitational trips to polling stations have existed for as long as there have been polling stations and have been justified as helping lazy, indifferent or poor people to make decisions that they have a right but no obligation to make.

A friend from Norrland tells us that a folk party pimp who is also a cab owner in his home district drove the car full of eligible voters.

From the mid-1950s I remember that the Social Democrats were slandered for driving pensioners to the ballot box in order to get their votes in return.

- It's Tage and Geijer and Sköld we want, I remember the accordionist Gnesta-Kalle singing from a truck bed at a campaign meeting. Tage was prime minister Erlander, Geijer was LO base Arne G and Sköld was finance minister Per Edvin.

Gnesta-Kalle told much later that he did not sing the campaign song for ideological reasons at all, but for the round gage that the party paid - and which surely brought the occasional S-vote from doubtful accordion friends.

A friend from Norrland tells us that a folk party pimp who is also a cab owner in his home district drove the car full of eligible voters in the hope that they would vote for his party.

Nothing new under the sun.

The bottle remained for a long time in a bribe display in the editorial office. Something for the Riksdag to follow?

When Europe was to be Christianized in the Middle Ages, it seems to have been easiest in the Baltics, where every farmer who was baptized received a new coat.

I once saw some films from North Korea on behalf of DN. Afterwards, the country's representative pressed a bottle of North Korean brandy into my hand with the hope that the films would be praised in the newspaper.

The bottle remained for a long time in a bribe display in the editorial office. Something for the Riksdag to follow?

In any case, the left succeeded in quickly drowning out the alarm about electoral fraud in a flood of new speaker rounds.

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