The Swedish system works like this:
Before an election the parties all have voting forms printed out, two for each type of election - municipal, provincial, state and European parliament. The parties are responsible for distributing those forms to voting locations where election officials are supposed to make sure they are provided to the voters. The first form is just a 'party vote' while the second is a 'personal vote' which contains a list of candidates, one of which is supposed to be marked by the voter. All these voting forms are put in a voting form stand which is placed on a table somewhere in (the vicinity of) the voting location. This location can be a school, a municipal centre, a public meeting room or any other suitable locality. Voters are supposed to take a single voting form for each type of election, select a candidate if they chose a personal vote form and put it in an envelope which they then seal. They then take these sealed envelopes to the voting table where the election officials are supposed to check whether the individual is eligible to vote in the ongoing elections. Swedish citizens are eligible to vote in all elections, people living legally in Sweden can vote in the municipal and provincial, but not the state elections. If they are citizens of the EU they can also vote for the European parliament. Eligibility is checked using a state-issued ID - passport, ID card or driver's licence containing the personal number - against a list of eligible voters. Once eligibility is confirmed one of the officials is supposed to put the envelopes in the respective voting box. The individual is then marked as having voted and can leave.
Here's where it often goes wrong in Sweden:
- voting is supposed to be secret but the stand with voting forms is often placed in such a way that others can see which voting forms the voter selects.
- party representatives sometimes hand out voting forms to voters in the queue, telling them to put these in the envelopes. People who do not speak Swedish and do not understand the Swedish election process can be - and have been - coerced to vote for specific parties in this way. This is not allowed but often not acted upon.
- voting forms for 'contentious' (i.e. (supposedly) 'right-wing') parties often go missing or are hidden behind those for other parties. The voter then has to ask the officials for forms for that party which violates voting secrecy. Officials sometimes refuse to provide forms for parties which they do not agree with, try to convince voters to vote for other parties, claim 'the forms did not arrive' or loudly call for other officials to provide forms for 'that party'.
- voters are supposed to get 2 or 3 envelopes before they select their voting forms, then take those to a voting booth and put them in the envelopes which they are supposed to seal. In some voting locations the envelopes are handed out after the voter selects voting forms which makes it possible for the person handing out the envelopes to see which parties the voter has selected, again leading to comments and attempts at persuasion to vote for something else.
- in some voting locations the officials tell voters not to seal the envelopes. This makes it possible for them to check which parties the voter has selected. There are many reports of this happening and of filled envelopes 'falling on the ground' instead of being put in the voting box.
- only a single person is supposed to be in the voting booth but there are countless reports of this rule being violated, often by men 'helping' their wives because 'they do not understand' or 'they do not speak Swedish' or by election officials who tell the voter which forms to select, again violating voting secrecy as well as enabling voting coercion.
- election officials are supposed to check voter eligibility using state-issued valid means of ID before the voting envelopes are put in the voting boxes. There are several reports of voting locations where the envelopes are put in the box before ID is checked which has led to ineligible voters being allowed to vote in the state elections. There are also reports on invalid means of ID being accepted.
The system with individual voting forms for every party and election is fraught with error, ripe for abuse and incredibly wasteful since most of the printed voting forms are never used and thrown away after each election - hundreds of millions of forms, every election. A much better system would be for the state to provide a single form on which all parties and candidates are represented as well as a space for the voter to enter a candidate of his or her choosing who is not on the form. That form is to be considered an act of value which is handed out in the voting locality by voting officials, a single form for each voter and election type. Just this single change would take away many potential points of fraud and failure in the election process. One form for one voter for each election, handed out at the voting locality by an election official after checking voting eligibility. It'd also be far less wasteful since there'd be no more need to print hundreds of millions of voting forms in a country with just about 10 million inhabitants.