Scott:
nope, we have many parties, 6 in our parliament, and a lot more smaller in the local elections, and there are a few more that don't get enough votes to get into the parliament. During elections we normally have local, regional and parliamentary elections, in addition to local issues. Not as many as in the US though.
the papers look something like this:
http://www.publicopinion.nu/imgutstallning/vallab2.jpg
(observe that the text on it is just a mockery.... couldnät find any better pic)
picture of voting ballots for different parties:
http://www.orebroll.se/tebladet/partilistor.jpg
picture of the envelope:
http://www.val.se/utils/img/brev5.gif
the small half-circle is the "hole"
1. who you vote for cannot be seen thru the envelope, but you can see the colour (which is the same for all parties for the same elecion ->yellow for parliament, and must be printed on paper supplied by the authorities) the small hole only reveals the colour, nothing of the text (it is a small hole at the side, which also reveals if there are more than one piece of paper inside). Nobody can see when you put in the piece of paper (ballot) into the envelope, nobody can see who you voted for until the envelope is open, which happens when voting closes
2. you can write if you want to, but most parties have pre-printed voting papers supplied right inside the voting rooms, even for many parties that have never been into the parliament. There are empy papers, with correcy colour and so on for you to write.
3. voter fraud? what's that - if you manage to vote even though you are not allowed to? well, does not really happen (see below*) here since we have lists of all who are allowed to vote - without ANYONE needing to go to an office to vote (safe for EU-parliament votes, other EU-nationsl in Sweden must register so as not to be able to vote in an other country, but that's a small exception). These lists of eligble voters are ready long time before the actual vote so people can check it out. A letter is also sent home to each person stating in what elections that person can vote in (if there are serveral) and how to file a charge if something is wrong.
4. racist?
(or did i misunderstand you... probably, in that case I am sorry:
5. result = no fraud, no missed votes, no miss-calculations, high vote turn up, easy vote counting (and easy to do a re-count), transparet rules
6. No problem with different systems in different states, the same applies in our EU-votes. But still 5. applies...., that is what you want to achieve and do they do that in the US?
7. but, sometimes mistakes happen, then a re-count takes care of it all. according to the law, if something goes really strange, then a re-vote must occur.
* vote fraud. It has happned here that a person cannot vote because the officials by mistake marked wrongly that he/she had voted, when it was somebody else doing so (despite there being an other person looking over the marking). The frequency of that occurence, translated into US-voting numbers, would mean ca. 20 irregular votes in the ENTIRE USA (counting 105 million voters). This is provided that it happens every election in Sweden, which it doesn't.
bottom line: differences here and there, fine - but why so many problems? The previous presidential election in Florida really made people turn their heads around... what are people up to? don't they take elections/democracy seriously?
8. international election observeres should be a good thing; most european countries invite them just out respect, even though they normally don't need them
