Swiss divided on foreign voting rights.
| Auteur | Ledsom, Mark |
| Fonction | Politics |
If you want to vote in Switzerland, you don't necessarily have to be Swiss--but you do have to live in the right part of the country. Swiss News looks at the issue.
At the end of April, Switzerland's frequently ambivalent attitude towards its foreign residents was demonstrated once more when Geneva voted in favour of foreign voting rights at local level while Bern turned down a similar proposal.
In Geneva's case the matter was decided by the general public with 52 percent of voters backing a proposal that will allow foreign residents to take part in communal polls and elections--so long as they have been based in Geneva for a minimum of eight years.
An accompanying vote on whether to allow foreigners to stand for office in local elections was rejected by 53 percent of voters, ensuring only partial success for those who had backed the "J'y vis, j'y vote" ("I live here, I vote here") campaign.
According to those campaigners, though, even partial success was worth celebrating after three previous attempts had ended in failure.
One committee member told the Tribune de Geneve that two 'yes' votes would have been "the icing on the cake" but said he was "very satisfied" to have secured at least the one, "given the current climate when it comes to immigration questions."
French-speaking support
Geneva's limited approval of foreign voting rights continues a trend in which foreign voting rights have been gaining slow acceptance throughout much of French-speaking Switzerland.
Canton Neuchatel stands out in particular for having granted foreigners the right to vote all the way back in 1848. The reason for this had little to do with pioneering liberalism however and a lot more to do with political expediency--since Neuchatel was at the time functioning both as a Swiss canton and as a Prussian principality.
A century and a half later, in 2000, Neuchatel also decided to let foreigners vote on cantonal issues, this time following the example set by canton Jura on its creation in 1979.
Jura subsequently allowed its foreign residents to stand for local office, with cantons Fribourg and Vaud following suit--all of which means that Valais is non the only canton in French-speaking Switzerland not to accord its foreign population any say in local affairs.
German-speaking reluctance
In the German-speaking part of Switzerland, however, it's the foreigners with voting rights who are in the clear minority.
In fact only two German-speaking cantons--Graubunden and...
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