Cabinet approved requests from four pioneering cantons – Basel City, St Gallen, Graubünden and Aargau – on Wednesday.
In total these expat voters account for 0.4 per cent of the Swiss electorate.
It is the first time that ongoing trials with e-voting are being extended to federal elections, according to the Federal Chancellery. To date e-voting tests have been carried out in more than ten out of the 26 cantons for ballots on specific issues.
There were just under 700,000 Swiss who lived abroad at the end of last year, about 136,000 of whom have registered to vote. Most live in neighbouring France, Germany and Italy, but there is also a sizeable number in North America.
The Organisation of the Swiss abroad has welcomed the cabinet’s decision as an important step towards the introduction of e-voting for all expatriates by October 2015.
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Cutting red tape for expatriate voting rights
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The cabinet agreed to support a proposal by a parliamentary committee which aims to waive the four-year renewal of applications. Instead the committee says registration for future votes should follow on automatically after Swiss abroad have taken part in a nationwide ballot. “The proposal no doubt makes it easier for the Swiss abroad to exercise…
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Some 177,500 voters in 12 cantons had the opportunity of casting their vote electronically, including 55,000 Swiss living abroad. In total, 14.4 per cent of voters registered to vote online did so. Eighty-five per cent of registered online voters were from cantons Zurich, Geneva and Neuchatel. Of these voters, some 13 per cent cast their…
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The internet platform for Swiss abroad is now looking forward to playing an active role in the debate on the federal elections later this year. The Organisation of the Swiss Abroad (OSA) looks after the interests of Swiss expatriates worldwide, who are often referred to as “the fifth Switzerland”. Since last August when it launched…
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For the first time a number of Swiss expatriates can have their say in a national election online as part of continuing trials with electronic voting. “The preparations for the national elections will peak in less than seven months from now,” Federal Chancellor Corina Casanova said at Monday’s news conference in Bern to launch the…
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The 16,000-strong Swiss community in Argentina is the largest Swiss expatriate group in Latin America. The book El Legado Suizo (The Swiss Heritage), traces the history of the immigrants and their clubs from 1885 to the 21st century. (Pictures: El legado suizo en el Bicentenario argentino. Buenos Aires: Camara de Comercio Suizo Argentina, 2010)
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