Canton Vaud grants Swiss Abroad voting rights for Senate elections

Vaud residents abroad will be able to vote for the Council of States Keystone-SDA

Residents of canton Vaud who live abroad will now be able to take part in elections to the Senate, as they already can for the House of Representatives.

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In a cantonal vote on Sunday, the “yes” side won by a wide margin, with 63.9% of the vote, while the turnout was around 42%. Some 25,000 Vaud residents living abroad are potentially affected. They will therefore be able to vote for candidates for the Senate; they can also now stand for election themselves. However, if they are elected, they would have to return to live in the canton.

Vaud is now the 14th canton to allow its nationals abroad to take part in elections to the Senate in Bern. All the cantons in French-speaking Switzerland, with the exception of Valais, now allow this.

No to voting rights for foreigners

Another initiative on Sunday, proposed by the citizen movement Ag!ssons and supported by the left, was rejected by 63.6% of voters. This text called for foreigners to be allowed to participate in cantonal elections, as has been the case at the municipal level since 2003, under certain conditions (having lived in the canton for at least three years and in Switzerland for at least ten years).

However, Vaud voters did not want to change the system, having already rejected a similar initiative in 2011, which was swept aside at the time by nearly 70%.

Sunday’s result is a victory for right-wing parties, who fought against the issue by claiming that the right to vote in cantonal elections must remain inseparable from Swiss citizenship.

Adapted from French by DeepL/dos

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