Reviewed Suspected Election Fraud – Exposed by Expo as 'Pro-Russian'

The far-left Expo labels the man behind a major petition on suspected election fraud as ‘pro-Russian’ and places the campaign in a far-right environment. However, the review does not address the hundreds of testimonies gathered by the campaign. At the same time, a large number of actual police investigations into suspected election crimes are ongoing following the election – including in Borlänge and Järva. The man behind the campaign accuses Expo of attacking the messenger in order to shift focus away from the uncomfortable allegations of fraud, which are largely linked to the Left Party and immigrant-dense areas.

The far-left foundation Expo’s frontman Jonathan Leman and staff member Hiba Abbas published on Thursday what they describe as a review of one of the larger campaigns concerning suspected election fraud after the parliamentary election. The focus is on the site Ett folk, which has collected testimonies about alleged irregularities and launched a petition for a new election. According to the site’s own counter, over 160,000 people have signed.

What Expo describes as a ‘revelation’, however, is not about the reported events at polling stations, but about the man behind the site – 36-year-old Robin Broman, who uses the name Robin Leopold when representing Ett folk.

Expo refers to him as a ‘pro-Russian opinion maker’ and reviews his previous posts on X, whose accounts he has shared, and which media he has participated in. Among other things, they highlight statements where he criticizes the EU’s stance toward Russia, calls Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy a dictator, and expresses appreciation for the Alternative for Sweden party’s Russia policy.

Expo also points out that the campaign has spread in environments and by individuals the foundation labels as far-right or conspiracy theorists. However, Expo presents no evidence that Broman is acting on behalf of Russia or that the Russian state is behind Ett folk. Nor do they declare any of the information about election fraud as false.

Highlight: Campaign collected hundreds of testimonies. Dismissed by the far-left foundation through an attack on the messenger

‘No one has rejected the testimonies’

In an interview with Kvartal’s Pelle Zackrisson, Robin Leopold hits back at the review. According to him, Ett folk received close to 1,000 testimonies after the election. Information deemed unsubstantial was filtered out, leaving 699 testimonies from 191 of the country’s 290 municipalities. His main objection is that Expo has not examined these reports.

‘If Expo had proof that the testimonies are false or fabricated, they would have presented it. They have not. […] No one has rejected them,’ he told Kvartal.

Leopold simultaneously rejects Expo’s characterization of him as pro-Russian and believes that his prior opinions on, among other things, Ukraine are irrelevant to the question of whether the testimonies about events during the Swedish election are genuine.

‘Instead, they chose to write about who I am and what my political views are. Those are two completely different things.’

Expo does not state in its review that the 699 testimonies have been found to be false. None of them are given as concrete examples in the article.

Suspicions and reports far beyond Ett folk

It is also clear from official data and reporting in established media that information about possible irregularities in the election does not solely originate from Ett folk or alternative media. The Police Authority stated on September 24th that 58 reports of undue influence during voting had been registered in 2026. The vast majority were filed in the weeks before and after the election.

The reports concern, among other things, ballots that were stolen or hidden, people who tried to influence voters near polling stations, and several cases where votes are said to have been offered for sale or where someone offered to buy votes.

The Police emphasize that a report does not mean a crime has been committed. The authority notes, for example, that several reported forms of influence may prove not to be criminal, even if they can be considered inappropriate.

A Kvartal review on September 23rd showed that 24 preliminary investigations were still ongoing of the election crime cases registered at the time. Eight were in high-profile Borlänge. Swedish Radio has also reported that about 4,000 incident reports regarding the election have come in and that suspected election fraud is being investigated in several places throughout the country.

This does not mean that widespread or systematic election fraud has been established. But it does mean that the suspicions do not exist solely in the campaign environment that Expo examines and wishes to dismiss as far-right or orchestrated from the Kremlin.

Borlänge became a national election issue

The most notable is the case in Borlänge regarding the Left Party’s Mohamed Abdukardir Ali. He was low on the Left Party’s parliamentary list and almost unknown even within his own party, where he had only been active for a short time and was also a new Swedish citizen.

Despite this, he collected 648 personal votes and leapfrogged the party’s top candidate, a well-known profile and spokesperson for the party. Prosecutors are investigating reports of, among other things, pre-marked ballots in connection with his personal campaign.

Suspected election fraudster Muhamed Abdukadir Ali (V).

The preliminary investigation had initially been dropped but was reopened when new information emerged. The Police’s National Operations Department (Noa) subsequently took over parts of the investigation, signalling that the matter is being taken extremely seriously.

Ali has denied any wrongdoing, but the Left Party nevertheless considered the accusations so serious that Ali was asked to take a time-out and not begin serving in parliament at the start of the term.

The Election Review Board has also had to deal with an exceptional volume of reactions after the election. According to SVT, about 15,000 appeals were filed, compared to around 400 after the previous election. The large number of appeals is not in itself definitive proof of extensive election fraud, but it does provide reason for serious suspicion.

Election officers sounded the alarm about Järva

In Järva, Stockholm, reports have also led to official consequences. Svenska Dagbladet columnist Peter Wennblad interviewed several experienced election officers who worked with advanced voting in immigrant-dominated Rinkeby, Tensta, and Husby. They described, among other things, voters arriving with pre-marked ballots, individuals instructing others how to vote, voters wanting to get rid of already prepared voting envelopes, and groups arriving together at polling stations.

The reports largely centered on the Left Party and the personal campaign for Ilyas Hassan, who received nearly 8,300 personal votes. After publication, the Stockholm City election office filed a police report. Police then launched a preliminary investigation into undue influence during voting and the offering or acceptance of improper rewards related to voting.

The Left Party has rejected any claim of organized election fraud. The Election Committee’s office manager Eva Debels, however, has stated that she considers the reports serious enough to be investigated by the police.

SVT has also interviewed election officers about the situation in Järva. One poll worker described problems with, among other things, envelopes glued shut and chaotic situations.

Accusations of racism from the Left Party

From the Left Party’s side, part of the reporting and debate has simultaneously been described as racially charged. In Borlänge, municipal council member Klas Holmgren (V) told Samnytt that the allegations of election fraud come from groups he labeled with strongly derogatory epithets.

‘You can see in various comment fields and so on that there is a sewer of racism that some are present in,’ he said.

Holmgren also said the accusations against Ali have not yet been proven and that the local party organization therefore did not feel the need to conduct its own investigation.

After reports from Järva, the Left Party employed similar argumentation. The Stockholm district chairman August Flensburg claimed there was ‘a right-wing agenda’, while party secretary Maria Forsberg described SvD’s editorial as a text ‘playing on racist ideas.’

Expo examines the sender – not the facts

What Expo’s investigation has focused on is demonstrating that the man behind Ett folk has previously expressed opinions which Expo describes as pro-Russian and that the campaign has spread in environments the foundation calls the far right. What the review does not do, however, is to assess the veracity of the hundreds of reports that Ett folk claims to have collected.

One of Expo’s front figures Daniel Poohl. Photo: Expo

This is also what Robin Leopold, in his response, describes as the principle at stake – who makes a claim and whether it is true are two separate questions.

The allegations of election fraud have a much broader background than a single campaign site. Police are investigating suspected election crimes in several places, Stockholm’s city election office has itself referred the matter to the police in Järva, and the investigation of the Left Party’s campaign in Borlänge continues regardless of what political opinions the man behind the Ett folk campaign previously expressed about Russia, the EU, or Ukraine.