Switzerland

In referendum elections Sunday, Swiss voters approved an 0.4 percent temporary increase in the country's value added tax, with the money targeted to shoring up the finances of the country's disability insurance system. The referendum prevailed with 54 percent of the vote. Opponents had claimed that the system's problems stemmed from fraud by people in other countries who pretend to live in Switzerland. More here.

I think this story from the Kansas City Star officially confirms it: we're in the midst of a national reassessment of the initiative and referendum. (Hat tip: Bruno Kaufmann).

That city -- and the state of Missouri -- are examining whether it's too easy to qualify measures for the ballot. They're just the latest places looking at initiative reform. Oklahoma, Oregon, Nevada, Arizona and Mississippi are also considering major changes to the process. (California, where there has been talk of reform but little legislative action, is an outlier here).

Intriguingly, Bruce Cain, the well-known political scientist at UC Berkeley, is quoted in this story. Kansas City, he says, is “falling into the California trap of constant electioneering. And that will lead to ballot fatigue and cynicism. This is a real problem.”

Nonsense, on many levels. There may or may not be ballot fatigue in California. Polling differs on the subject. And, yes, when you vote more often, turnout drops. But there's no evidence that ballot fatigue is, by any measure, a problem. If it is, the Swiss, who vote four times a year (at least) with relatively low turnout, have managed to survive a centuries-old case of ballot fatigue. And they have an efficient, well-managed, peaceful country. California should be so lucky.

And these days, you can never be too cynical.

In the United States, ballot initiatives usually appear "naked" on the ballot. That is to say, voters decide yes or no on a particular statute or constitutional amendment, and that's it. There's only one choice.

Most of the rest of the world doesn't do things this way. In Switzerland, where modern direct democracy was invented, voters get more of a choice. They not only can vote yes or no on an initiative, but they also get to pass a judgment on a legislative counter-proposal to each initiative. And they can decide which of the two meausures-- the initiative or the counter-proposal--takes effect in the event that both are approved by voters.

But change may be coming in Oregon. The possibility of a counter-proposal is part of state legislation, now being debated, that would require that initiatives go to the legislature first before they appear on the ballot. If approved, the legislation would give lawmakers the option of approving the initiative, doing nothing and letting the initiative go on the ballot, or offering a counter-proposal.

What is your blogger up to in Switzerland?

I wasn't sure when I arrived. At the invitation of Bruno Kaufmann, a Swiss-Swede journalist who heads the Initiative & Referendum Institute Europe (which is affiliated with a public university in Marburg, Germany), I was invited to a meeting of academics and journalists from around the world. A handful of journalists who arrived early took a tour around the country in the days before the conference. Now we're in Aarau, the first Napoleonic capital of Switzerland (it's a small city between Bern and Zurich), for the big meeting. Switzerland was the choice of site because more than 50 percent of all popular referenda and initiatives -- at the federal or national level of a country -- have taken place here. And Aarau has a brand-new center for the study of direct democracy.

That's the motto of the In-House Drafting Committee, one of the most interesting government offices I've come across. The committee handles the official translation of all legislation -- including initiatives and referenda -- in Switzerland. It's a crucial role in a country with three major national languages -- German, French and Italian. They do not have a light hand--they do serious editing for clarity and for constitutionality. The office has an interesting collection of people: historians, political scientists, linguists and two-- count 'em, two -- theologians. (They're considered particularly good on questions of ethics, morality and the original meaning of texts).

It's an article of faith that Switzerland's diversity, particularly in language, is both a challenge and an advantage for the country's democracy. "Ideas tend to be expressed more clearly when they have to be translated," one staffer explained to me. I asked if there is often resistance to the changes they suggest in ballot initiatives filed by citizens. The answer: no. The committee essentially provides legislative drafting to initiative sponsors. The initiative writers can reject the suggestions of the drafting committee, but they rarely do. The committee eliminates ambiguity, make initiatives shorter, and make the terms so clear that their meaning will be clear in three languages. That's what it means to think like a philosopher and write like a farmer.

I spent Tuesday morning at the Kafigturm, the former women's prison in Bern that has been converted into the leading spot for holding political forums, press conferences and meetings. (It's a short walk from the headquarters of the government and the Parliament). My reporter friends and I visited with Hans-Urs Wili, a Swiss institution who has been spent the last third of a century (today was the day when he reached exactly one-third, and this man knows how to count) as the Swiss referee in matters of direct democracy. His title is head of the department of political rights at the federal chancellery. As such, he advises lawmakers and citizens alike in matters of referenda and initiatives. His is the office to which you turn in signatures. Just as Liz Hill, the legislature's non-partisan analyst in California, was long known as the budget nun, you could call Wili the Swiss initiative monk. (He declined the title when I offered it, but still, it fits).

Wili was looking forward to a long weekend of checking signatures on referendum petitions, which are due in his office by 6 p.m. Thursday. Finding valid signatures is a problem in Switzerland as it is in other places with direct democracy, but the problem is a bit different for Wili. Municipalities review petitions first to check that those who signed are citizens and eligible voters. There isn't much problem there. Wili's headache is weeding out repeat signatures. It's not uncommon for Swiss voters to sign the same referendum or initiative multiple times. Why? It's not necessarily intentional.

The Swiss prefer referenda to ballot initiatives. Referenda -- that is, a measure to reverse an act of the parliament -- are successful most of the time. That is, the public approves a new law. But the Swiss are deeply skeptical of initiatives -- that is, an effort to impose a new constitutional amendment directly, without input from Parliament. Less than 10 percent of Swiss initiatives are approved by voters. While American direct democracy favors the initiative, Swiss direct democracy is kinder to the referendum.

Even when initiatives pass here, they often are not implemented. I visited with Alf Arnold (photo above), originator of the Alpine Initiative, which is considered a success in Swiss politics. That initiative was approved by the people in 1994; in an effort to reduce pollution, noise and traffic in the Alps, it mandates a "modal shift" in transportation through the range, from trucks to rail. But Arnold expressed frustration at the government's failure to implement the measure. When I asked him whether he would sponsor an initiative if he did it over again, he said he wasn't sure. He even suggested that he was thinking of sponsoring an initiative to eliminate the initiative from the Swiss constitution -- if only to launch a national discussion about the difficulties of implementation. 

Over a bratwurst lunch Monday in an Alpine mountain pass, Sustenpass, I had an interesting back-and-forth with Bruno Kaufmann, the Swiss-Swedish journalist who is president of the Initiative & Referendum Institute Europe. The subject? Residency and the nature of voting.

Bruno was born Swiss, and remains a citizen. In fact, he's considered a citizen in two different Swiss municipalities to which he and his family have ties. But Bruno lives with his wife and children in Sweden. He votes in all three places (though he only gets a Swiss federal ballot in one of the two Swiss towns). Shocked? This is perfectly legal, since citizenship here is granted locally, not federally.

I objected, arguing at first that this would be illegal in the U.S. and rightly so. He doesn't live in or pay taxes in the Swiss towns. He doesn't have to live daily with the consequences of his votes. But Bruno made several good arguments. Times have changed. People move around more. National identity is fluid--we can have more than one. He feels that he's properly a citizen of more than one place. And he still has deep ties to these Swiss towns.

As I thought about it, I wondered if Bruno might be onto something.

BERN, Switzerland -- As a group of journalists and I (all of us cover direct democracy) make our way around this country by train and by bus on our way to a conference Wednesday, we keep meeting Swiss who boast -- politely -- about their direct democracy. They describe it as frustrating, problematic, but also as essential part of their political culture. There's one topic, however that they seem sheepish about: voter turnout.

It's low, very low. In Sunday's referendum and initiative elections in the canton of Zurich, the nation's largest, voter turnout came in at just 35 percent. And Denise Meyer, an election official there, described that as typical. In Uri, where direct democracy is a passion, a top canton minister described a turnout of 45 percent as pretty good.

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.