Election Guide 2002 - Sweden.se

atio in connection with the first equalising seat equals
the number of votes polled by the party. In other words,
an odd-figure method is used. This reduces the risk of a
party being completely unrepresented in a constituency.
Registration of a party’s name
A party can have its name registered. Rules on this
subject exist to prevent abuses of party names and are
not in any way part of the nomination procedure.
Party names are registered by the Election Authority.
Protection of a party’s name is linked with the possibility
of submitting the names of the candidates to the Election
Authority before the election. A party must submit a
certain number of election candidates in order to
safeguard its registered party name during an election.
Personalised votes
Once the allocation of seats between the parties has been
settled, it remains to work out which candidate or
candidates will occupy them.
Members of the Riksdag are selected primarily on the
strength of votes cast for them personally. The
personalised vote score is the number of personalised
votes cast for a particular candidate in a particular
constituency. In order to be returned on the strength of
personalised votes, the candidate must have gained such
votes equalling at least 8% of the party vote in the
constituency.
If two or more candidates have surmounted this
barrier, they will be returned in the order of their
personalised vote scores.
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