“Voter fraud everywhere,” a person wrote on X about advance votes that were incorrectly registered. But the Swedish Election Authority rejects the claim, NORDIS partner Källkritikbyrån reports.

Last Friday the Swedish Election Authority reported a technical error that was then feared to affect approximately 4,000 advance votes. Over the weekend, the error concerning advance votes was analysed, and it was found that at most 500 advance votes are affected.

The figure may decrease further, the Swedish Election Authority writes on its website, and regrets that it will probably not be possible to determine who cast these votes.

– The error occurred because election officials began accepting a new vote before they had completed the voting process for the previous voter. As a result, the votes were registered incorrectly, Jenny Stad, press officer at the Swedish Election Authority, told Källkritikbyrån.

Post on X on 4 September.

It will not be possible to determine which individuals are affected, but the Swedish Election Authority has promised to compile a list of the polling stations and the times at which the votes were received. This list will be published on the Swedish Election Authority’s website shortly, at the earliest tomorrow, Tuesday.

– If you did not vote at these locations at the relevant times, you can be certain that you are not affected by this error, Anna Nyqvist, head of the Swedish Election Authority’s administrative office, said in a press release.

Those who voted at an affected polling station at the relevant time are then being urged to cast a new vote on election day, 13 September. However, it is not possible to vote in advance a second time. If you cast an advance vote twice, the vote will be invalid.

The post about “voter fraud” mentioned above has received just under 1,500 views, but additional rumours about electoral fraud are spreading in the comments, and similar comments are appearing in many places across social media.

Linked to old rumours

In addition, other commentators on Twitter/X have linked the incident to the persistent false claims of electoral fraud that spread after Val.se went down on election night in 2018.

That error was caused by an overload attack, and the website problems during election night did not affect the voting results, news agency TT reported at the time.

The election database providing the media with vote-count figures continued to function, and several media outlets were able to follow the vote count in real time, Dagens Nyheter wrote. On election night in 2022, the Swedish Election Authority’s website was also subjected to overload attacks – the election result was not affected then either.

From Dagens Nyheter’s publication of 10 September 2018.

Claimed to be a Social Democrat

The spread of rumours over the weekend has also, in some cases, been linked to claims that Anna Nyqvist, head of the Swedish Election Authority’s administrative office, is a Social Democrat.

Post on X on 6 September.

Claims have been circulating on social media that the Swedish Election Authority “has been infiltrated by the Social Democrats” and that Anna Nyqvist “is a real old-school Social Democrat”.

We have not been able to find any evidence that Nyqvist is a Social Democrat, and the Swedish Election Authority’s press service also rejects the claim:

“Anna Nyqvist is a politically unaffiliated civil servant and has never been a member of or active in a political party,” the press service wrote in an email.

Excerpt from a comment on Facebook, 6 September.

ID concerns online

Källkritikbyrån has previously reported on rumours of voter fraud in connection with information published by the Swedish Election Authority about how to vote in August.

The information stated: “If you do not have an identity document, another person can certify that you are who you say you are.” This prompted some people on social media to begin spreading rumours that it was possible to vote several times, something that was dismissed by authorities and experts.

From Källkritikbyrån’s publication of 19 August.

The Swedish Election Authority told Källkritikbyrån that it was not aware of any case in which this possibility had been abused since it was introduced in 2006.

Warned of “widespread electoral fraud”

Two weeks ago, the Sweden Democrats branches in Mönsterås and Nyköping issued warnings about extensive electoral fraud this year, in posts containing several inaccuracies about the electoral system.

From Källkritikbyrån’s publication of 27 August.

The inaccuracies in the posts concerned, among other things, which ballot papers are to be available at each polling station and the rules governing assistance behind the voting screen.

The Sweden Democrats in Nyköping edited their post, while the Sweden Democrats in Mönsterås removed theirs.

– The Facebook post in question was unpublished yesterday after I became aware that there was a post on our Facebook page containing incorrect information. The text in the post had been shared from another Facebook page that we considered to be credible. We regret what happened, Anni Juhl Nielsen, chair of the Sweden Democrats in Mönsterås, told Källkritikbyrån at the time.

Overall: A number of advance votes, at most 500, have been registered incorrectly. The incident, which the Swedish Election Authority describes as very serious, has led to rumours that it involves electoral fraud and that the head of the authority – Anna Nyqvist – is a Social Democrat. No evidence has been presented for either claim, and both have been rejected by the Swedish Election Authority.