Gerrymandering the Early Voting System in Sweden?

• In Event: Political Mobilisation and Electoral Participation

Abstract

Early voting in Sweden was used by nearly half the electorate in the 2022 elections, and opened 19 days prior to election day. Since the 2006 election early voting has been administered by the Swedish municipalities, more specifically by municipal election boards run by local party politicians. The shift from national to municipal administration opened up for locating early voting sites at new, different, and a diverse range of locations such as libraries, city halls, shopping malls, and sports arenas. Different municipalities have come to develop different structures of what kinds of locations they offer for early voting and at what availability. A parallel development after the municipal takeover of early voting was an increase in available voting sites for the first two elections, but since the 2014 elections the number of available voting sites has dropped by about 23 percent nationwide, despite the growing interest in voting early. In this study I examine the effect on voter turnout and proportion of early voting in 290 Swedish municipalities by type of location and availability in five elections from 2006 to 2022. Due to the fact that politicians are responsible for making the formal decisions on the locations of voting sites I also study the effect of incumbent ruling party ideology in the municipality leading up to the election, to investigate whether party ideology affects the availability of voting sites, and the effect this could have on different groups of voters.

Author

• Robin Hakansson, Mid Sweden University