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Signature fraud: How politicians react – News

  • Collecting signatures for initiatives and referendums and making money from them – that should be banned.
  • This demand is now being made by politicians after it became known that the Federal Prosecutor's Office has investigated several cases of electoral fraud.
  • The Tamedia newspapers had reported that several companies had allegedly forged signatures on a large scale.

Green National Councillor Greta Gysin wants to put forward a proposal this week to ban paid signature collection, her party has announced. Centre Councillor Daniel Fässler would support such a ban, as he told the Tamedia newspapers. Both suggest that signatures could also be collected electronically in the future.

“Such incidents undermine the public’s trust”


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Assessments by SRF Federal Parliament editor Christa Gall:

“As of today, it is not possible to say whether the signatures can be declared invalid retrospectively. The exact extent of the forgeries is not known. There are experts who say that we must assume that in the past we have voted on initiatives and referendums that would never have happened otherwise. The Federal Chancellery does not share this view, however. From the number of indications, the Federal Chancellery cannot conclude that referendums are therefore wrongly put to the vote. The investigations are now underway and are very complex; individual signatures are being followed up.

It is impossible to say to what extent such incidents damage trust in direct democracy. There is no damage, but it dents the trust of the population when the processes are not carried out correctly. Or it at least reinforces the impression that you can buy a vote and the resulting discussion with money. And that is not conducive to trust in direct democracy.”

The Foundation for Direct Democracy also believes that the Federal Council and Parliament have a responsibility to “immediately stop” the commercial collection of signatures, as it writes. Clubs, associations and parties whose collaborating signatures are collected for their own or supported goals should be exempted.

Apparently entire sheets copied

“Proceedings are currently underway against various natural persons and against unknown persons,” the Federal Prosecutor's Office (BA) said in response to a request from the Keystone-SDA news agency. As part of the proceedings in question, the BA and the Federal Office of Police carried out house searches and interrogations. People behind the Service-Citoyen initiative had become suspicious because of many invalid signatures and filed criminal charges, wrote the Tamedia newspapers.

The signatures in question were collected by the company Incop in exchange for money. In some cases, entire sheets of paper were apparently copied from older referendums. The Federal Prosecutor's Office did not comment on which initiatives were involved or against whom the proceedings were directed.

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Legend:

According to a newspaper report, the phenomenon of forged signatures seems to be particularly widespread in western Switzerland.

KEYSTONE/Martin Ruetschi

Vincent Duvoisin, head of the Municipalities and Cantons Department at the Vaud cantonal administration, told the Tamedia newspapers that several municipalities had already reported possible cases of fraud to the canton at the beginning of 2019. The municipalities were then instructed to report irregularities. According to the canton of Vaud, no clear political pattern emerged.

A dozen popular initiatives affected

The initiatives affected included the pro-nuclear power plant initiative “Stop the Blackout”, the neutrality initiative, the factory farming initiative and the initiative for an import ban on fur products produced through animal cruelty. One of the criminal complaints on the subject came from the Federal Chancellery, which was confirmed upon request.

There is no evidence that popular initiatives or referendums were put to a vote thanks to forged signatures.

“The reports of suspected cases concern around a dozen federal popular initiatives to varying degrees,” wrote spokesman Urs Bruderer. The focus is on signature lists from communities in western Switzerland, although since last winter there have also been increasing reports of suspected cases from German-speaking Switzerland.

These initiatives contained fake signatures


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The following initiatives from the right-wing conservative camp are affected:

  • The pro-nuclear initiative “Stop Blackout”
  • The SVP neutrality initiative
  • The SVP initiative against the 10 million Switzerland
  • The People's Initiative for Food Security
  • Two anti-abortion initiatives (which failed in the collection stage)

The following initiative projects from the ecological camp are affected:

  • The initiative against factory farming
  • The initiative for an import ban on fur products produced through animal cruelty
  • The initiative for an import ban on foie gras
  • The animal testing ban initiative

In addition, there are two initiatives that cannot be clearly located politically:

  • The justice initiative of Adrian Gasser, who wanted to select federal judges by lot
  • The Service Citizens Initiative

Source: Tamedia newspapers

As far as the concrete consequences of the alleged forgeries are concerned, however, Bruderer is not currently assuming the worst-case scenario: “There is no evidence that popular initiatives or referendums were put to a vote thanks to forged signatures.” Rather, the number of signatures declared invalid by the municipalities suggests that the control of the validity of the submitted signatures is working.

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