Survey: most Swiss against paid signature collections

Recent claims of firms forging signatures has highlighted vulnerabilities in Swiss direct democracy. Keystone-SDA

Over 80% of the population is in favour of banning the use of professional firms to collect signatures for people’s initiatives, according to a survey.

Furthermore, almost two-thirds of respondents said they were in favour of a digital collection of signatures in order to increase the security of the process, said survey group Leewas on Wednesday.

However, enthusiasm for digital collection forms varied depending on party sympathies. Backers of the Liberal Greens more likely to vote yes or rather yes (three-quarters) than sympathisers of the right-wing Swiss People’s Party (56%).

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University and third-level graduates were most keen on digital collection; three-quarters of them backed the idea. Among those with only a compulsory schooling, the figure is 54%.

Almost nine out of ten respondents were meanwhile in favor of initiative committees having to declare from which company and for how much money they bought signatures. At 94%, Liberal Green supporters were again most keen on this. For People’s Party supporters, the figures was 84%.

Leewas interviewed 19,552 people in Switzerland between September 19 and 22 for the survey.

Adapted from German by DeepL/dos

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