Voting in Switzerland

Voting in Switzerland (called votation) is the process by which Swiss citizens make decisions about governance and elect officials.

The polling stations are opened on Saturdays and Sunday mornings but most[1] people vote by post in advance.

At noon on Sunday (Abstimmungssonntag in German, Dimanche de votation in French), voting ends and the results are usually known during the afternoon.

[2] Direct democracy allows any citizen to challenge any law approved by the parliament or, at any time, propose a modification of the federal Constitution.

Federal, cantonal and municipal issues are polled simultaneously, and a majority of votes are cast by mail.

[3] The most frequent themes are social issues (e.g. welfare, healthcare, and drug policy), public infrastructure (e.g. public transport and construction projects) and environmental issues (e.g. environment and nature protection), economics, public finances (including taxes), immigration, asylum, and education, but also about culture and media, state system, foreign affairs, and military issues – again on any of the three political levels.

[6] Federal popular initiatives of little public appeal sometimes cause participation of less than 30% of the electorate, but controversial issues such as a proposed abolition of the Swiss army or a possible accession of Switzerland into the European Union have seen turnouts over 60%.

[7][8][9] It is often thought that the lower voter turnout is due to “selective participation” and should not be seen as disinterest in governance matters by Swiss citizens.

Many voters, especially in villages and small cities, put the return envelope directly into the municipality mailbox.

Once received at the municipality, the transmission card is checked to verify the right of the voter, then the anonymous return envelope is put into the ballot box with all the other votes.

At polling places voters take the ballots that they have previously received in the mail and drop them off at the booth.

Polling stations have traditionally been frequented by organisations collecting signatures for federal popular initiatives.

CHVote, from Geneva, is in use in cantons Vaud, Bern, Lucerne, Basel City, St Gallen and Aargau.

[18] The other system is sVote from Swiss Post, proprietary but disclosed software developed by Scytl.

[18] In 2019, politicians and computer experts launched a people's initiative to ban the use of e-voting for security reasons.

If a canton has two or more seats in the National Council, a so-called proportional representation takes place.

For example, a voter can use the Social Democratic ballot with the candidates A, B and C but choose to strike B and C and write-in D from the Greens.

The ballot has only one line where the voter can place the full name of any of-age citizen that lives in the said canton, i.e. a write-in candidate.

However, cantons use a two-round system, during the first ballot only candidates which win an absolute majority are elected.

It forces the authorities to listen to all sectors of the population, to minimize the risk that they reject new laws in referendums.

Before presenting a new bill to the parliament, the federal government usually makes a wide consultation to ensure that no significant group is frontally opposed to it, and willing to launch a referendum.

[26] Modifications to the constitution are subject to obligatory vote and require a double majority both of all voters nationally and of the cantons.

Once approved, new constitutional provisions will be made based upon the already existing legislation the new initiative affects.

The municipal assemblies vote on changes to the "town statutes" (Gemeindereglement), governing such matters as the use of public space, on financial commitments exceeding the competence of the executive branch, and on naturalisations.

Switzerland has restrictive citizenship laws that tend to exclude immigrants from being able to participate in political processes.

All Swiss citizens aged 18 years or older have been allowed to vote at the federal level since women were granted suffrage on 7 February 1971.

For these voters, registration through the local or nearest Swiss consulate is compulsory (as they are not already registered in the municipality in which they live).

The Supreme Court decided in 2003 that naturalisations were an administrative act and thus must obey the prohibition of arbitrariness, which rules out rejections by anonymous popular vote without an explanatory statement.

Some politicians have started a federal popular initiative to change the Swiss Constitution in order to make votes on naturalizations legal,[35] but it reached a referendum in June 2008 and was soundly rejected.