Political parties and ballot papers

Parties

There are no rules prescribing how to form a political party. A party is a group of voters who takes part in an election under a common party name. A party is treated as a non-profit-making association.

A party may register its party denomination (the party name on the ballot paper) with the Election Authority and notify candidates prior to an election. In this way the party protects its name and its ballot papers. However, a political party does not need to have its name registered in order to take part in an election.

Ballot papers

Ballot papers are yellow for Riksdag elections, blue for county council elections and white for municipal elections and elections to the European Parliament. The ballot papers are required to be identical in size and material.

The parties must order ballot papers before a certain date in order to ensure that they can be delivered not later than 45 days before election day. Ballot papers may also be ordered after the set date, but no guarantee is then given concerning delivery time. Ballot papers are ordered from the County Administrative Board, except in the case of elections to the European Parliament, when they are ordered from the Election Authority.

The Election Authority presents all the ballot papers that have been printed on its website www.val.se.

Three types of ballot papers are in use in the different elections:

Name ballot papers (ballot papers with party name and candidate names) with a box in front of each name, in which the voter may enter a specific mark (a cross). By doing this the voter has cast a special personal vote.

Party ballot papers (ballot papers with party name). With such a ballot paper the voter votes for the party but does not cast a personal vote.

Blank ballot papers on which a party name may be written in. For those parties that have obtained more than one per cent of the votes in the Riksdag election the election officers are responsible for putting out party ballot papers in the polling stations and voting places. This applies to Riksdag, municipal and county council elections. Name ballot papers are put out by the parties themselves.

For elections to the European Parliament the election officers are responsible for putting out name ballot papers at all places where it is possible to vote if the party has only one name ballot paper.