Democratic duty time

We voted for kommun and landsting today. We are not full-fledged Swedes, so we are not allowed to vote for parliament (Riksdagen). For us Dutchies this was new, normally we vote for everything separate, now we could vote for the whole shebang in one go.

The system is quite okay, but it involved a lot of paper. Especially because you get the names for every type for every party in your mail, delivered by every party themselves. And the adverts on the street could almost be called extreme littering. It was funny to see the environmental party missing, admitting the pollution, but that could be a coincidence.

So you pick three pieces of party paper and you can select a specific member, but it is not required. You see a lot of people take a lot of papers inside to hide their affiliation, which seems like a bit of a waste. You put the paper in an envelop and give them to the people sitting there. To let them see the difference between the different colours (yellow for Riksdagen, blue for landsting and white for kommun) there is a small open corner so they can see if you did not by accident chose a wrong piece of paper.

The whole election was quite educational and interesting. You really try to relate the parties to the ones you already know. For most there is a 1-to-1 relation, but there is always a twist. What is "different" is the pre-elections coalitions, almost forcing two options; we'll see how that will work out with such a small gap.

Tonight we will probably barricade ourselves in front of the TV and see whether they also have a fancy touch screen.