Should We Be Concerned About Early Voting? Examining the Rejection of Early Votes in the 2022 Swedish General Election

In this study, we contribute to the research field concerning early voting by examining the rejection of early votes in the general election in Sweden in 2022. The results show that the rejection rate of early votes in Sweden is high, which is of course problematic because eligible voters who vote should not have their ballots rejected because of errors. Contrary to our theoretical expectations, we did not find any patterns in the level of rejected early votes among the municipalities. We also examine why early votes are rejected, and the findings demonstrate that errors of different kinds occur, though some are more common than others, for example, putting more than one ballot paper in a ballot envelope seems to be a common problem. Finally, we provide several recommendations for the Election Authority concerning how the level of rejection of early votes can be reduced in Sweden.