Swiss Journal: More Choice For Voters Here

It's Sunday morning in Bulach, Switzerland, in the canton of Zurich (and 15 minutes outside the main city). I arrived groggily a few hours ago, in the middle of initiative and referendum elections. Swiss voters graciously allowed me and a handful of other journalists (from Sweden, Bulgaria, Latvia, and Taiwan) to watch them fill out and turn in their ballots at a polling place in the city hall here. Bells rang, calling folks to the polls and to church.

First impressions. The Swiss offer people more ways to vote. These folks going to the polls are rare. Most voting is done by mail. And the Swiss also are permitted to vote by text message. This greater choice does not result in high voter turnout, however. Swiss and Americans have some of the lowest turnout figures in the civilized world. There are a lot of elections -- four a year for most Swiss.

Second, the ballot offers more options. Voters here were considering a ballot initiative to ban smoking in restaurants. The government counered with their own measure that would ban smoking, but offer a variety of exceptions (for certain parts of restaurants, and for big parties, among other things). But Swiss voters didn't simply get to vote on those two measures. They were also asked the following question: if both measures were to pass, which would they prefer? Even those who vote no on the initiative and the legislative referendum would have a choice. Instead of the simple binary choice, the Swiss were actually asked to make a variety of different choices on one issue, with a half-dozen different voting combinations.

By comparison, back home in California, initiatives often are written with provisions designed to poison competitors. Such provisions typically say that if the initiative in question wins and has a higher percentage of the vote than a similar measure that wins, the initiative in question prevails. I asked a local Swiss political activist and consultant if such provisions were permitted under Swiss initiative and referendum law. He looked at me as if I were crazy.