Swiss Abroad voting material: these cantons sent it out too late

The documents for the Swiss Abroad can be sent out six weeks before the ballot. Keystone / Marcel Bieri

The late delivery of voting and election material continues to infuriate Swiss citizens who live abroad. We asked Switzerland’s 26 cantons when they sent out the documents. Who is top – and bottom – of the class?

Voters in Switzerland have been able to fill out their ballot papers for Sunday’s federal elections for weeks. Many envelopes have long been returned to the relevant municipality.

But what about the 221,448 Swiss Abroad who are entitled to vote? As with previous elections and votes, we’re receiving angry messages from all over the world that the documents have either not arrived or arrived late. In some cases it was no longer possible to return them by post in time.

The Swiss Abroad feel hindered in their democratic participation. This is a fact that regularly leads to parliamentary proposals and amendments. In March, the government published a reportExternal link on exercising the right to vote from abroad, analysing the various attempts to improve the situation.

Six-week limit

The dispatching of voting and election documents to the Swiss Abroad is regulated at ordinance level. The material may be sent out at the earliest one week before the official mailing in Switzerland, i.e. six weeks before the ballot. This year, the earliest date for mailing to Swiss citizens abroad was the week beginning September 11 (calendar week 37).

“As in the past, the Federal Council has asked the cantons in its circular letter to the cantonal governments to ensure that the election documents for the Swiss Abroad are sent out before they are officially dispatched within Switzerland,” the Federal Chancellery told us.

We wanted to know from the cantons whether they had complied with this request and when they sent the documents to the Swiss Abroad.

Such a survey is not easy. Fourteen cantons keep the electoral register of the Swiss Abroad on a decentralised basis, in other words each municipality is responsible for doing it. In nine cantons the electoral register is managed by the cantonal administration, while in three cantons responsibility lies with the administration of the cantonal capital.

All 26 cantons responded to SWI swissinfo.ch’s enquiry. Twelve of the 14 cantons where the municipalities are responsible for the mailing revealed the cantonal capital’s mailing date.

And the model pupil is…

Canton Aargau turned out to be the model pupil. While the earliest possible mailing date set by the government was Monday September 11, Aargau already sent out the documents on Friday September 8, the end of calendar week 36.

Is this a problem? No, says Maria Bühlmann, who manages the canton’s Swiss Abroad voting register, confidently. She reckons that from the weekend of the ballot, Friday evening is part of the weekend. Thus, canton Aargau had respected the permitted six weeks before the voting weekend, she says.

“We’ve scheduled it for years in such a way that we hand over the packed documents to the post office on Friday evening,” she explained, adding that these items would then have to be sorted before the documents could actually be sent out. “In this way I ensure that the documents are not sent out in the course of calendar week 37 but on the first possible day.”

Bühlmann says she thus hopes to give the Swiss Abroad, especially on the other side of the Atlantic, the chance to participate in elections and votes.

Behind this approach, however, there is also a security consideration, she stresses – “there is data worthy of protection on the voting card”. Bühlmann says that when the material is posted before the weekend, the post office assumes responsibility for the 3.7 tonnes of material.

In canton Aargau, more than 12,500 Swiss Abroad are now registered, but Bühlmann would be pleased to see a higher turnout. Although the documents are sent out early, not all registered Swiss Abroad take part in elections and votes.

E-voting

Aargau is one of the cantons that would like to send out the election and voting material even earlier. According to the government report in March, most cantons have indicated that this is possible for them in principle.

However, the stumbling block seems to be the government. The report states that “the process from editing the voting brochure to printing it ready for dispatch, which takes several months, is already very tight”. In order to enable dispatch earlier than six weeks before the election or voting day, “extensive organisational interventions” would have to be made in the production process. “Something that’s not so simple with a system that’s been successful for years.”

But the problem of late ballot papers won’t simply disappear. “Those six weeks are often not enough. Overseas shipping sometimes takes up to four weeks,” Bühlmann says. This means that it’s not possible for the Swiss Abroad to return their documents in time.

For the 2023 elections, at least the Swiss Abroad registered in cantons Basel City, St Gallen and Thurgau won’t have this problem. They, too, are dependent on punctual delivery, but since they will be able to vote by e-voting this year, the deadline for returning the ballot papers no longer applies.

Problems with packaging

Twenty-three of the 26 cantons say they sent out the documents during calendar week 37 and thus complied with the federal government’s instructions. Only two cantons – Jura (3,102 Swiss Abroad eligible to vote) and Solothurn (4,195 Swiss Abroad eligible to vote) – failed to send out the voting and election material until calendar week 38.

“Unfortunately, there was a delay in packing, which is why it was only possible to send them out in calendar week 38,” said Pascale von Roll, deputy head of the cantonal chancellery in Solothurn.

In canton Jura there had been a delay in distributing the documents to the municipalities “owing to a delivery problem of some of the packages”. “For this reason, the dispatch of the voting material for the municipalities was delayed until September 18,” the canton’s state secretariat said. However, the cantonal authorities say they don’t know the extent of the delay. Canton Jura is one of 14 cantons in which the municipalities send out the voting material.

The documents were therefore sent out in the course of calendar week 38 at the earliest, so more than a week later than requested by the government. Valuable days that the Swiss Abroad from cantons Solothurn and Jura are missing in order to participate in the elections.

Translated from German by Thomas Stephens