Switzerland seems odd on the face of it to me - what explains low turnout for registered voters? Too many elections/votes? Voter fatigue?
* Not interested.
* Not competent enough to make a decision.
* Social isolation.
* Frustration.
* Some participate in other ways than voting.
Some other interesting facts from 2015 [3]:
* 30% turnout of young people between 18 and 30 years.
* 67% turnout of old people between 65 and 74 years.
* 53% of men participate, 46% of women participate.
* Old women do participate less than young women, possibly because Switzerland introduced votes for women very late in 1971.
* The concordance system [4] leads to less fluctuations in the composition of the government. It's not like in the US, where you have only 2 completely different parties fighting each other. So, less changes, less reasons to go to vote.
* Many people are happy with the status quo. Another reason to skip voting.
[1] https://www.aargauerzeitung.ch/schweiz/warum-die-mehrheit-sc...
[2] https://www.beobachter.ch/politik/wahlen-2019/wahlen-2019-wi...
[3] https://www.nzz.ch/schweiz/eidgenoessische-wahlen-2019/wahle...
Despite that, since 1971 there have been 5 female presidents from 3 different parties: Calmy-Rey, Dreifuss, Leuthard, Sommaruga, Widmer-Schlumpf (some having served more than once)
* as they have since 1403 https://www.ai.ch/politik/landsgemeinde
I feel you are comparing apples to oranges. If every citizen in the US was registered, then how do the numbers compare then?
The other registration, ie. not the automatic one, in Belgium applies to foreigner who live in Belgium and want to have some say in local elections. I can't even see how this kind of registration even compares to the voter registration in the US. Well, they both have the word "registration" but it isn't even remotely the same.
If you need help interpreting the numbers of registration vs voting, let me know. I can search the real numbers and break them down to citizen (auto-registration) and non-citizens (who could register but didn't) and non-voters (both categories combined but didn't show up at the election)
Switzerland is a confederation and has lots of referendums, where the entire population decides on a policy, not on who should decide on policies. Both limit the power of the national government.
However, reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_in_Switzerland, voter turnout is low in their referendums, too.
But if they prosecuted you, here's what you are facing:
(In art. 210 "kieswetboek" or "voting law book" for our english readers)
For a first offense, the judge may verbally reprimand you! (oh noes!) In extreme circumstance, they could give you a fine. That fine is less than a speeding ticket or the fine the city council could give you for... let's say... "eating a sandwich while sitting on the stairs in front of a public building" (?!).
Should you persist in your "evil" and "devilish" ways and got called before a judge 4 (four) times for not voting. Then they can take away your right to vote for 10 years[1]. This is the equivalent of saying: "Oh, you don't want to vote! Now you don't get to vote and won't be prosecuted for it"
The low fines, even if the judge imposed them, and the ridiculousness of this article made prosecutors say: "We got better things to do". So the law is: everyone needs to vote, but if you feel strongly about not voting... we're not going to bother.
[1] It is bit more complicated than that. But for most citizens who don't want to vote, it wouldn't make a difference.
The same sort of dogwhistles about 'voter fraud' have been getting airtime in the media as well so I'm sure it won't be long before we have widespread disenfranchisement, just like in the US.
They simply cannot send every citizen a letter (or email).
(The UK is in the same boat)
There have been lots of updates though. Several states allow same-day registration and at least one state does not require registration at all.
For the UK, it might be more the UK mantra “if it ain’t completely and utterly broke, don’t fix it”. They tend to love traditions, even if they have become somewhat impractical.
For the UK, keeping a central register also was a bit easier than one would think, as women and most men didn’t have the right to vote until the middle/late 19th century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reform_Act_1867:
“Before the Act, only one million of the seven million adult men in England and Wales could vote; the Act immediately doubled that number. Moreover, by the end of 1868 all male heads of household were enfranchised as a result of the end of compounding of rents.”
(If I understand it correctly, “compounding of rents” is where landlords pay the property taxes that renters have to pay, increasing rent accordingly. Because only those paying property tax were eligible to vote, a side effect was that many renters weren’t allowed to vote)
It’s absolutely a thing in Australia and NZ, and in the world’s largest democracy, India, too.
https://www.aec.gov.au/enrol/ https://vote.nz/enrol-to-vote/enrol-check-or-update/ https://eci.gov.in/voter/voter-registration/
They have a large number of single issue referendums multiple times a year.
There were 10 in 2018: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Swiss_referendums
When a US colleague transferred from our US office to our European office they were surprised and a little shocked that they were required to register their address with the local authorities. They felt that the government had no right to know where they lived.
For me, as a European, I was quite surprised about the opposite. How is it possible to have a functioning government without proper records about who lives where?
Only after the realization that the US does not keep records about who lives where did things like voter registration make sense to me.
Two anecdotes:
- the presidency rotates among members of the executive committee, on a yearly basis. Cynically, the president exists so if a foreign head of state wants to have dinner, they have someone with whom to do it.
- when a referendum comes to the ballot, we don't just have to vote it up or down. The government gets a chance to say "yes, we agree this is a problem, but we'd suggest solving it this other way". Those are two options. The third (and I believe this is most popular) is "meh, it's working fine as it is".
Anyway, compared to US politics[1], swiss politics is wonderfully sedate. I'd like to think that's because the politicians are here to make the country run more smoothly, so the rest of us have better things to do.
Edit: and yes, we receive all balloting material by mail, and return it by mail. No problem. It works.
[1] is this because there are no center parties?
Q. Why is US politics like the Cupid Shuffle?
A. To the right, to the right, to the right, to the right / To the left, to the left, to the left, to the left
So how do the electorate hold the executive to account if they say the will do x instead of y but actually do nothing or something else entirely?
Can you have a reference back on a subsequent referendum to a motion that was remitted in a previous referendum - that's technically the democratic way to do it.
See the link zubspace gave above about collegiality (Concordance); what I've referred to as the "executive committee" is exactly the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Council_(Switzerland)
As to your specific questions, I'll do some research for the details and get back to you...
Could you please elaborate on "remit"? I'm not sure what you mean.
General information: https://www.ch.ch/en/demokratie/political-rights/referendum/