E-voting trials to resume for upcoming votes
The Swiss government has granted three cantons licences to resume trials with online voting in federal votes, notably for the Swiss Abroad, it said on Friday.
Basel City, St Gallen and Thurgau will be able to conduct online voting for a limited part of the electorate. The authorisation includes the popular vote scheduled for June 18 this year. It runs up to and including the popular vote on May 18, 2025, according to a government press releaseExternal link.
Online voting is to be available to Swiss voters abroad who are registered in any of the three cantons that have applied for a licence. Basel City also allows Swiss citizens with a disability to vote online. In St Gallen, a limited number of Swiss voters from communes offering e-voting can also register to vote online.
The Organisation of Swiss Abroad External link(OSA) hailed the decision. Its director Ariane Rustichelli called it “a breath of hope and a strong positive signal for the 220,000 Swiss abroad who are registered to vote”. She noted a drop in voting turnout of Swiss Abroad since the e-voting trials were stopped four years ago. “June 18 will be a date not to be missed. A new setback would be a serious blow to confidence in this voting channel,” she told SWI swissinfo.ch.
For the first vote in June 2023, the cantons asked that a total of around 65,000 voters be allowed to take part in the trials, or around 1.2% of all Swiss voters.
Previous e-voting trials were halted because of security concerns. The government says its latest decision will allow the cantons with licences to use Swiss Post’s new online system for the first time. It says the system “has been examined in a number of steps by independent experts and by the public in a bug bounty programme and a public intrusion test” and that “the system and its operation have been improved to such an extent that it is possible to use it within the limited scope of the approved trials”.
+ Read about tests on the new E-vote system
For federal parliamentary elections in October this year the government reminds cantons that they need a basic licence from the federal government to conduct e-voting. The cantons can decide whether or not to apply for such a licence.
Rustichelli said the OSA was confident that at least the cantons of Basel City, Thurgau and St Gallen would apply for authorisation for the federal elections on October 22.
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