My 9 year old asked me some questions about the upcoming Swedish vote, so I decided to take him on a tour of Parliament. Sometimes it pays off to live in a capital city.
Tours of Parliament are free in both Swedish and English. It’s a nice building with great views and interesting to see how things differ. I will now share the two most interesting things I learned on the tour:
1. Until the 1970s, people with epilepsy were not allowed to vote.
2. These days, Sweden does it’s best to make sure every citizen can vote, including people in hospitals and prisons.
I already knew that Sweden makes it very easy for everyone to vote. You can practically vote everywhere a few weeks before the official elections (plus, the official election is always on a weekend).
In Texas, you vote on a Tuesday when you have to work. So for many people, it’s not easy to go vote because you may commute 30 minutes or more to work and don’t have time to drive back to your neighborhood voting station and back with the short lunch time allowed. Technically I believe you are supposed to be allowed to leave work to vote, but in lots of jobs, your employer gets angry about it anyway. At least that was my experience when I lived there.
I look forward to voting next month. I’m looking for the party that issues mandatory 2 month vacations for everyone in the winter, more water parks in the summer, and brings IBC Root Beer to Sweden. Strangely, I haven’t found that party yet.
