For two weeks, a large part of Swedish social media had already held the trial, delivered the verdict and served the sentence against Mohamed Abdukardir Ali and, to be safe, every Swedish-Somali in the country. Now Borlänge municipality reports that it found no sign of irregularities at the polling station at the centre of the case. Dagens Nysvenskarna extends its deepest sympathies to everyone who had already printed the verdict.
A difficult morning for the experts
Spare a thought for the old Swedish keyboard prosecutor this Friday. He woke up, made his coffee and opened P4 Dalarna, only to learn that the municipality's daily reports from the early-voting station in the Kupolen shopping centre contain no fraud at all. They mention missing ballots, IT problems and ballots running low. That's it.
The deputy municipal director described early voting at Kupolen as having gone well, without major incidents. For many, that was the biggest shock since they found out kebab pizza isn't Italian.
This was the same polling station that had been described online as the headquarters of a clan conspiracy. It turns out the most dramatic thing that happened there was a printer jam.
What we actually know
To be clear, the National Anti-Corruption Unit's preliminary investigation is still ongoing, and the prosecutor isn't commenting. If anyone has broken election law, they should be investigated and prosecuted, whatever their name. A municipality's reports from one polling station don't close a criminal case.
But here is what the facts look like so far. Ali entered the Riksdag with 648 personal votes. As recently as late September, no one had been formally notified of suspicion of a crime. According to Expressen, police haven't been able to document the theory that money was paid to voters. Earlier, a police source told SVT's reporter that surveillance found no evidence of coercion, payments or pre-filled ballots. A law professor also pointed out that driving voters to a polling station has traditionally not been considered a crime.
That was all we knew. It was enough for half the internet to know everything.
The strange maths of collective guilt
As we wrote last week, a Social Democrat candidate, Maslah Omar Ahmed, received even more personal votes in the same areas. If many votes in Tjärna ängar were proof of fraud, the Social Democrats should already be in police questioning. But that logic was never meant to work in both directions.
When an old Swedish local politician fiddles with the expense card, nobody asks every person from Småland to show their receipts. But when a few individual Swedish-Somalis are suspected of something that hasn't even been investigated, every Swedish-Somali is expected to answer for it, plus all Muslims, since it's convenient to lump them together.
That isn't analysis. It's genealogy with pitchforks.
The trolls live closer than you think
The result of that verdict without a trial was not just angry posts. In less than a week, 45 people were reported for over 100 hate crimes, mainly incitement against an ethnic group, in a 165-page complaint. The trolls weren't called Dmitri in St Petersburg. They were ordinary people living in Sweden, watering their geraniums with a profile picture from Gran Canaria.
Criticising a religion isn't a crime in Sweden. Threatening or seriously degrading its followers is. The difference isn't subtle. It's in the Penal Code.
A small hope for the disappointed
We understand that this is hard. Some had prepared speeches, memes and op-eds about the death of Swedish democracy. To them we offer a gentle suggestion: keep the drafts. If the investigation one day shows that a crime was committed, you can use them, and you'll have the evidence on your side. Until then, you might try the old Swedish tradition of lagom, applied to conclusions.
Because the real threat to democracy was never that Swedish-Somali citizens voted, organised and won. It was the idea that when new Swedes participate, something must have gone wrong, and that the verdict can come before the investigation.
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