Switzerland Today
Dear Swiss Abroad,
Why do the Swiss Abroad vote the way they do? How is the fact that the Swiss Abroad are generally educated and have a global outlook expressed in elections? Can Swiss voters abroad tip the scales? All is revealed.
A motion to turn canton Aargau into a pioneer of electronic voting – something the Swiss Abroad have long called for – has failed in the cantonal parliament. By one vote. And all because one politician got confused and pressed the wrong button.
E-voting certainly faces an uphill battle in Switzerland. A pilot project to allow it in some cantons was abandoned in 2019 amid technical and security concerns of the system run by Swiss Post. The number of Swiss Abroad voting in canton Geneva then fell from 36% to 27%.
However, at the beginning of March cantons Basel City, St Gallen and Thurgau were given the green light to resume e-voting trials, and last week we explained how the Swiss Post had launched a platform for testing e-voting. The Swiss Abroad from those three cantons will be able to use the system in the national votes on June 18.
Canton Aargau in northern Switzerland also wanted to be an e-voting pioneer. As Argovia Today points outExternal link, last year the number of Swiss Abroad registered in the canton increased by 3.5% to almost 12,000 “and they want to have their say”.
The cantonal parliament recently voted on whether to approve e-voting trialsExternal link as soon as the federal government’s technical and organisational reviews had been completed. However, the motion failed – by 68 votes to 67. Opposition came from the Green Party (the money could be better spent elsewhere) and the Swiss People’s Party (it’s not safe).
Even more galling for the losers was that one politician the Social Democratic Party, which backed e-voting, said she had pressed “no” by mistake. The party demanded a re-vote, but a politician from the winning side said that in the parliamentary chamber “people have to be awake”. Aargau will not be an e-voting pioneer. For now.
- Basel City gives electronic voting a second chanceExternal link – bz Basel
- More Swiss Abroad want to have their say in canton AargauExternal link – Argovia Today
- Swiss Abroad blame e-voting failure for falling turnout – SWI swissinfo.ch
- Who can vote in Switzerland? Who can’t? – SWI swissinfo.ch
When the Swiss Abroad do manage to vote, they tend to follow the government line, although they are occasionally less conservative. Their votes are rarely decisive – but they can be.
If Swiss citizens living abroad had been the only ones to vote in the 2019 parliamentary elections, the Green Party would have become the country’s strongest political player by a decent margin.
In this article, political scientists Sarah Bütikofer and Claude Longchamp (pictured) take a detailed look at the voting record of the Swiss Abroad over the years. They also answer the following questions: Why do Swiss Abroad vote the way they do? How is the fact that the Swiss Abroad are generally educated and have a global outlook expressed in elections? Can Swiss voters abroad tip the scales?
Bütikofer and Longchamp are covering the 2023 election year for SWI swissinfo.ch from the perspective of Swiss voters abroad. In ten articles they will look at topics on the horizon that are of particular interest to the Swiss Abroad.
- How political parties are courting the votes of the Swiss Abroad– SWI swissinfo.ch
What do you think of when you think of the alphorn? A Swiss farmer blowing long notes up a mountain? Pioneering musician Eliana Burki, who has died aged 39, was very far from this traditional image, to put it mildly.
Burki, who was also a singer and composer, made a name for herself by anchoring the alphorn in various genres including funk, pop, jazz, world music and classical music. In the process, she greatly expanded the instrument’s repertoire. In this clipExternal link, Burki plays her song “Vacuum Funk” – not on an alp, but on a beach.
Concert tours took Burki beyond Europe to the US, South America and the Middle and Far East, among other places, making her “the most sought-after ambassador for the Swiss national instrument in jazz, classical and world music”, her label said in a statement.
She performed with her band I Alpinisti and as a soloist and also worked with classical orchestras such as the Stuttgart Philharmonic and the Munich Radio Orchestra. For world music, she incorporated influences from the folk music of the countries she had visited.
In addition to her concert activities, Burki worked as a sound therapist and graduated from the Beverly Hills Playhouse acting school in Los Angeles.
- Alphorn players break ranks to hit new notes – SWI swissinfo.ch (2009)
- Brain tumours: ‘Those affected don’t live longer than one to two years’External link – Blick
- Eliana Burki: her career in picturesExternal link – St Galler Tagblatt
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