The debate over the number of signatures required to put a popular initiative to the Swiss vote raises an essential question: should the number be revised... or should signatories be asked to make more of an effort?
The threshold of signatures required to bring a simple question to a federal vote is a crucial element of Swiss democracy. Any change at this level becomes immediately political.
Currently, 100,000 signatures must be collected for a popular initiative to be put to the vote. In the latest issue of Regard Libre, Yann Costa believes that the threshold is too low, since it has not been updated to keep pace with population growth, thus allowing minority initiatives to be launched. Nicolas Jutzet, for his part, prefers to deal with unhelpful ballots rather than raising the threshold, as such a measure could deprive citizens of the opportunity to bring a text to fruition. However, well-resourced political parties could still «spam» the process.
The question seems insoluble. Yet there may be another way. Rather than the signature threshold itself, isn't the problem that many signatures are obtained «easily», like a click on a «Like» button, rather than the result of a genuine will? In order to better filter popular initiatives, perhaps more effort should be demanded of signatories rather than organizers.
Here are a few ideas:
- Go to the town hall to sign
- Issue a CHF 10 voting «deposit» which is refunded at the end of the signature collection period.
- Send a handwritten letter of 100 words explaining the good reasons for this referendum. (The reasons will not be discussed, only the length of the text will be taken into account).
By retaining the same signature threshold, while requiring signatories to make an additional effort to demonstrate their motivation, the referendum would remain accessible to citizens, while at the same time filtering out initiatives unlikely to win a majority.
French 
German 
English