Election Day

Hey
Ok now. I'm going to try and do a post on yesterday’s Election Day. Really boring stuff, especially as I know nothing about either elections or Sweden.

The only reason I'm doing this is to highlight one strange thing. I thought it was strange but I've only ever voted in Australia. Maybe this is how the rest of the world votes or maybe it was just our small community I don’t know. But more on this later.

Anyway before I get to that let me try and give you some boring facts about Swedish politics.

There are 7 major parties;
The Reds
Left Party (formerly Communists)
The Social Democrats (largest party)
Green Party (yay free love and joints for all)

The Blues
Centre Party (Old farmers party, like our national party)
Folk party (Peoples party, like the liberals, I think)
Christian Democrats, (its in the title, ha-ha idiots wondered why they lost votes)
New Moderates (formerly Conservatives)

Of the last 74 years Sweden’s Social democratic party have been in power for 65 years. (Hence the high taxes and great social benefits)

Sweden has always been a very red country, they have always believed in equal right for everyone, they don't like class societies etc etc. The only two times, in the last 74 years, that the blues party have been in power was when there was a bad economy and people thought that the blues could save that (they didn't and got voted out next time)

Ok that’s enough... I don't know why I though about doing this, I'm bored already and I'm doing my favourite thing (sitting in front of a computer). If you want anymore information just look out for Elin on MSN after all she studies this crap at uni. (God I hope she never reads this, only joking baby, kiss kiss).

Like I said before, the only reason I am doing this is because I noticed something very strange when I voted. (Pre-empting the question, with my visa I can vote only in the local side of governments, need to be Swedish to vote nationally)

So check out this pic.
If you maximise it you can see heaps of little leaflets. These are just sitting in the entrance. These are your voting papers. Anyone one can see what papers you are picking up, anyone can stand there and watch you, even take photos like I did.




This to me seemed very wrong as there is no way to do an anonymous vote. Each party is represented on these papers, blue for county council vote, yellow for national vote and white for local vote.




Then you get given some little envelopes and you go to these little booths and you put your vote papers in the envelope??? Like WTF everyone has just seen which papers I picked up why do I need privacy to put them in an envelope?

The only way I could see to do an anonymous vote would be to pick up every one of the vote papers and then go to the booth to choose.

I can't say if this happens all over Sweden or if it was just our little area. Some bigger cities might have had the vote papers behind the booths. Still no one complained, no one ever complains in Sweden.

Sometime you can see people queuing for a ticket machine that’s for a queue, ha-ha, still make me laugh.

So that is what I wanted to share with you all, the anonymous voting system in Sweden.


Here is some more pics of the voting



Oww, btw it looks like the combined blue parties have won or will soon; very close 172 for the reds and 178 for the blues.