The last few weeks I was thinking about the chances, possibilities and dangers of our semi-direct democracy. Looking at the [data](https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/de/home/statistiken/politik/abstimmungen.html)the amount of votes per year continue to trend upward. Of the 650 votes that happened on a federal level in the history of this country, 189 happened since the year 2000. Regarding our current situation this doesn’t seem to be stopping soon and on the contrary is likely to increase even more. Popular covid-„critical“ channels have been gathering signatures for a multitude of referenda and popular initiatives, most notably the two on the Covid-law, but also against public media funding, another initiative in cooperation with SVP/UDC to cut serafe funding*, an initiative to stop obligatory inoculation, a cantonal referendum to overturn the epidemic law and an initiative to create an extra parliamentary commission to assess the legality and legitimacy of the handling of the corona-crises.

*the initiative is being launched and led by SVP and only supported by „covid-skeptics“.

My fear is that a radicalized small minority is overwhelming this democratic tool, which leads to less effective policy making, disillusionment to participate in voting, and rising costs and therefore stratification of campaigning. I want to state clearly that I don’t have an issue with the individual aforementioned proposals being voted on (expect the last one whose constitutionality is questionable) but believe that the sheer volume is disadvantageous to the democratic process. Although I’ve so far focused in “covid-skeptics”, and self proclaimed leaders of the movement like Nicolas Rimoldi have clearly shown, that they don’t respect this democratic process, the problem has been around before and won’t disappear after the current crises, e.g. SVPs Durchsetzungsinitiative, Hornkuhinitiative or Zurichs continuous voting on a new Footballstadium.

One possible solution is to make launching a referendum/popular initiative harder by raising the amount of signatures needed. Of course this would also raise the cost of launching a referendum from the already high 1 million CHF ballpark figure for a popular initiative (see the recent justice initiative), and to combat this effect I would also propose to make signing initiatives online significantly easier/possible at all. The last time this was done was in 1977 as a reaction to universal suffrage earlier that decade. With almost 2 million new eligible voters the quorum for a referendum was raised from 30’000 signatures and a ~[1.8%](https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfsstatic/dam/assets/20324033/master) ratio of signatures to eligible voters before universal suffrage to 50’000 signatures at a ratio of ~[1.3%](https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfsstatic/dam/assets/20324033/master) in 1977. Had this change not been implemented the percentage of signatures to eligible voters would’ve been ~0.79%, in November we were at [0.9%](https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfsstatic/dam/assets/20324033/master). It could be argued that the situation isn’t as bad yet but one should not forget the added reach and mobilization potential the internet and social media has brought us. Therefore I propose to at least double the amount of signatures needed, which would result in a quorum of ~1.8% neatly realigning us with the ratio back in 1970. For more information regarding this subject I recommend looking at the [Bundesblatt](https://swissvotes.ch/attachments/4ca2fe444d16e204e05222877b67ac9e69f96f6613e73578b87a3599e1dbbbf6) of the last time we raised the quorum so you don’t just have the opinion of a random redditor to work from.

I believe reforming the law on popular initiatives and referenda to double the amount of signatures needed, coupling said quorum to population growth and to facilitate easier signing of initiatives would stabilize and secure the direct aspect of our semi-direct democracy by allowing parties and popular movements to spend their money more on positive change and less on fighting for the status quo, assuring broader support for issues to be discussed, calming the current landscape of punitive referenda, and facilitating the use of your right to support a (popular) referendum.

What are your opinions on this proposal? Do you think a reduction in the accessibility of a democratic tool is rectified to insure the quality of said tool? Did I oversee an aspect of the issue? Do you agree that more popular votes doesn’t necessarily equal a better democracy/system? Do you think doubling the amount needed is too much or too little? I’m looking forward to your constructive feedback.

17 comments

  2. I would even opt for a variable number of signatures, depending on the number of persons having voting rights. These should be around 5.5m currently. 100,000 or 50,000 are 2% and 1%, resp.

    Make that 5% and 2.5%, resp. That’d raise the limits to 250,000 and 125,000.

    Revisit the numbers all 4 years or so.

  3. Yes, if we wanted to act in the spirit of the ‘original legislation’, we would have to (significantly) increase the number of required signatures accordingly.

    However, I think it is good that nowadays initiatives and referenda can be submitted with relatively less effort. But, in my opinion, the content of initiatives should have to be (better) checked and optimised. I have the feeling that there have been some initiatives in recent years that were not thought through to the end. Adressing *this* issue could be a sensible strategy.

  5. Personally, I think the number of signatures needed for a referendum/initiative should be set to 2.5%/5% of the actual voter base as per last census. I discuss the initiatives in the following remarks only.

    In general, I support the idea of higher signature numbers in order to enhance the value of a popular vote because valuation is what nowadays is missing. Browsing the chronological list of initatives, there are the following types:

    * Bizarre initiatives (e.g. Carrier pigeon troops, cow horn provision etc.) mostly driven by a one-man-show.
    * Initiatives to propel the ideological discourse, but knowingly chanceless (e.g. private health financing of abortions etc.)
    * Initiatives as election campaign tool (most left/rightwing initiatives issued two years before election year)
    * Initiatives with very particular and/or personal topics (e.g. Introduction of the death penalty for rapists)
    * Finally initiatives that will decide on a landmark change for the bigger part of society. In my eyes the only legitimate ones.

    In addition, I am convinced that the method of adaptation of a successful initiative must be changed. The whole process should be:

    * After successful signature collection (5% of voters), the legislation will treat the topic as if the initative has been accepted. Meaning the full legislative process is executed and laws created/amended as needed on paper, but not enacted. May take years, but has to be done
    * On voting Sunday, the voters have a clear picture what the initiative created in the law and what the outcome means.
    * If the initative is accepted on voting Sunday, the legislation is adopted immediately as per the provisions mentioned above.

    The goal should really be to put the value of initatives back in the right position of the political landscape in Switzerland.

  6. No. IMHO if fifty/a hundred thousand people care about an issue, it’s important enough to talk about it and vote on it. Total population doesn’t matter.

  7. Nah, launching initiatives and referenda is already expensive enough. That’s the most important criterion that should be used, not the percentage of voters required.

  8. You are anxious about it being too easy for right-wing minority groups to launch popular initiatives ..

    .. but the same goes for left-wing minority groups .. I believe we’ve had substantially more left-wing initiatives over the last 10 years (and most of them were soundly defeated).

    I personally think the problem is that we only to get to vote on ideas promoted by radical, outraged groups .. so we vote on reversing successful Covid laws or dehorning cows .. and not so much on ‘mainstream’ ideas like health insurance reform ..

  11. Imo, i think having a low barrier for entry is a boon to us. It allows for topics to be discussed which may not affect many people, but are quite important to them. Voting on hunting laws for instance will be of barely any consequence to most of the population, who live in urban areas. To a smaller amount of farmers it would have a much greater impact though. However Im not completely against an increase, but i wouldnt want it to go much beyond a 50% increase. Its way easier to raise the bar, than to get it back down again.

  12. >against public media funding, another initiative in cooperation with SVP/UDC to cut serafe funding

    This is ridiculously far of the point of the law. The media law is not about serafe its about other major, nota bene privately owned, newspapers.

    As for your general point I don’t think there is a thing such as too many votes on something as any vote also allows the status quo to defend itself and strengten its reasoning to reassert itself not just as a held dogma but a living truth (akin to Mills 2nd argument on free speech). I would arguably be more in favor of not doing votes less than 1 year before the national election to prevent them for being used as a dumb mobilization tactic.

  14. 1. The people who are *anti-vaxxers* and want to force **pro-vaxxers** NOT to take the vaccine are in a very dark place in their life.
    2. The people who are **pro-vaxxers** and want to force *anti-vaxxers* to take the vaccine are also in a very dark place in their life.

    Few understand this.
     

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