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- Art. 5a FC
- Art. 6 FC
- Art. 10 FC
- Art. 16 FC
- Art. 17 FC
- Art. 20 FC
- Art. 22 FC
- Art. 29a FC
- Art. 30 FC
- Art. 32 FC
- Art. 42 FC
- Art. 43 FC
- Art. 43a FC
- Art. 55 FC
- Art. 56 FC
- Art. 60 FC
- Art. 68 FC
- Art. 75b FC
- Art. 77 FC
- Art. 96 para. 2 lit. a FC
- Art. 110 FC
- Art. 117a FC
- Art. 118 FC
- Art. 123b FC
- Art. 136 FC
- Art. 166 FC
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- Art. 11 CO
- Art. 12 CO
- Art. 50 CO
- Art. 51 CO
- Art. 84 CO
- Art. 143 CO
- Art. 144 CO
- Art. 145 CO
- Art. 146 CO
- Art. 147 CO
- Art. 148 CO
- Art. 149 CO
- Art. 150 CO
- Art. 701 CO
- Art. 715 CO
- Art. 715a CO
- Art. 734f CO
- Art. 785 CO
- Art. 786 CO
- Art. 787 CO
- Art. 788 CO
- Transitional provisions to the revision of the Stock Corporation Act of June 19, 2020
- Art. 808c CO
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- Art. 2 PRA
- Art. 3 PRA
- Art. 4 PRA
- Art. 6 PRA
- Art. 10 PRA
- Art. 10a PRA
- Art. 11 PRA
- Art. 12 PRA
- Art. 13 PRA
- Art. 14 PRA
- Art. 15 PRA
- Art. 16 PRA
- Art. 17 PRA
- Art. 19 PRA
- Art. 20 PRA
- Art. 21 PRA
- Art. 22 PRA
- Art. 23 PRA
- Art. 24 PRA
- Art. 25 PRA
- Art. 26 PRA
- Art. 27 PRA
- Art. 29 PRA
- Art. 30 PRA
- Art. 31 PRA
- Art. 32 PRA
- Art. 32a PRA
- Art. 33 PRA
- Art. 34 PRA
- Art. 35 PRA
- Art. 36 PRA
- Art. 37 PRA
- Art. 38 PRA
- Art. 39 PRA
- Art. 40 PRA
- Art. 41 PRA
- Art. 42 PRA
- Art. 43 PRA
- Art. 44 PRA
- Art. 45 PRA
- Art. 46 PRA
- Art. 47 PRA
- Art. 48 PRA
- Art. 49 PRA
- Art. 50 PRA
- Art. 51 PRA
- Art. 52 PRA
- Art. 53 PRA
- Art. 54 PRA
- Art. 55 PRA
- Art. 56 PRA
- Art. 57 PRA
- Art. 58 PRA
- Art. 59a PRA
- Art. 59b PRA
- Art. 59c PRA
- Art. 62 PRA
- Art. 63 PRA
- Art. 67 PRA
- Art. 67a PRA
- Art. 67b PRA
- Art. 75 PRA
- Art. 75a PRA
- Art. 76 PRA
- Art. 76a PRA
- Art. 90 PRA
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- Vorb. zu Art. 1 FADP
- Art. 1 FADP
- Art. 2 FADP
- Art. 3 FADP
- Art. 5 lit. f und g FADP
- Art. 6 Abs. 6 and 7 FADP
- Art. 7 FADP
- Art. 10 FADP
- Art. 11 FADP
- Art. 12 FADP
- Art. 14 FADP
- Art. 15 FADP
- Art. 19 FADP
- Art. 20 FADP
- Art. 22 FADP
- Art. 23 FADP
- Art. 25 FADP
- Art. 26 FADP
- Art. 27 FADP
- Art. 31 para. 2 lit. e FADP
- Art. 33 FADP
- Art. 34 FADP
- Art. 35 FADP
- Art. 38 FADP
- Art. 39 FADP
- Art. 40 FADP
- Art. 41 FADP
- Art. 42 FADP
- Art. 43 FADP
- Art. 44 FADP
- Art. 44a FADP
- Art. 45 FADP
- Art. 46 FADP
- Art. 47 FADP
- Art. 47a FADP
- Art. 48 FADP
- Art. 49 FADP
- Art. 50 FADP
- Art. 51 FADP
- Art. 54 FADP
- Art. 57 FADP
- Art. 58 FADP
- Art. 60 FADP
- Art. 61 FADP
- Art. 62 FADP
- Art. 63 FADP
- Art. 64 FADP
- Art. 65 FADP
- Art. 66 FADP
- Art. 67 FADP
- Art. 69 FADP
- Art. 72 FADP
- Art. 72a FADP
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- Art. 2 CCC (Convention on Cybercrime)
- Art. 3 CCC (Convention on Cybercrime)
- Art. 4 CCC (Convention on Cybercrime)
- Art. 5 CCC (Convention on Cybercrime)
- Art. 6 CCC (Convention on Cybercrime)
- Art. 7 CCC (Convention on Cybercrime)
- Art. 8 CCC (Convention on Cybercrime)
- Art. 9 CCC (Convention on Cybercrime)
- Art. 11 CCC (Convention on Cybercrime)
- Art. 12 CCC (Convention on Cybercrime)
- Art. 25 CCC (Convention on Cybercrime)
- Art. 29 CCC (Convention on Cybercrime)
- Art. 32 CCC (Convention on Cybercrime)
- Art. 33 CCC (Convention on Cybercrime)
- Art. 34 CCC (Convention on Cybercrime)
FEDERAL CONSTITUTION
CODE OF OBLIGATIONS
FEDERAL LAW ON PRIVATE INTERNATIONAL LAW
LUGANO CONVENTION
CODE OF CRIMINAL PROCEDURE
CIVIL PROCEDURE CODE
FEDERAL ACT ON POLITICAL RIGHTS
CIVIL CODE
FEDERAL ACT ON CARTELS AND OTHER RESTRAINTS OF COMPETITION
FEDERAL ACT ON INTERNATIONAL MUTUAL ASSISTANCE IN CRIMINAL MATTERS
DEBT ENFORCEMENT AND BANKRUPTCY ACT
FEDERAL ACT ON DATA PROTECTION
SWISS CRIMINAL CODE
CYBERCRIME CONVENTION
- I. History of origins
- II. Significance of the provision
- III. Quorum of signatures
- Bibliography
- Materials
I. History of origins
1 The provision on signature quorums has been adapted several times over the decades. As early as the National Council Election Act of 1919, there was a requirement that each ballot proposal be signed in person by at least 15 eligible voters residing in the constituency. With the enactment of the 1976 PRA, the minimum number of signatories was raised to 50. In the 1994 revision, the signing quorum was increased in a graduated manner for small, medium, and large cantons to 100, 200, and 400, respectively. In later revisions of the law - under the title of "administrative facilitations" - the rule was relaxed in favor of larger and medium-sized parties by exempting them, first under conditions, later unconditionally, from providing signatures.
2 In the 2002 revision, the requirement to provide signatures was initially waived for those parties that were registered with the Federal Chancellery, submitted a single election proposal in the canton, and were represented in the constituency during the expiring term or had obtained at least three percent of the votes in the last general renewal election. In the 2014 revision, the criterion was finally dropped whereby parties are only exempt from submitting signatures if they only submit a single election proposal in the electoral district. It was only this second relaxation of the rule that brought the parties the relief they had hoped for in many places, as the larger and medium-sized parties in most cantons have regularly been running with more than one election proposal for several National Council elections. Consequently, in the 2015 National Council elections in the canton of Bern, not a single one of the 26 election proposals was exempt from providing the 400 signatures. In 2019, the SVP, SP, BDP, FDP, Grüne, glp and EVP parties were then no longer required to submit signatures for their total of 19 election proposals, unlike the other 15 election proposals.
II. Significance of the provision
A. General
3 The purpose of the provision, according to which an election proposal must be supported by a minimum number of eligible voters, is to prevent non-serious election proposals (so-called jux lists) and to curb the "list and candidate inflation" regularly lamented in parliamentary debates. The increase of the quorum to 50 signatures in the context of the creation of the PRA was intended to "put some stop to the frivolous or wanton deposit of lists." The goal of stemming the "flood of lists and candidates" or preventing junk lists or "beer table lists" was also used to justify the renewed increase in the minimum number of signatures during the 1994 revision.
4 As another approach in the effort to counteract "list inflation" even more strongly, the introduction of a printing cost contribution to the ballot papers or a deposit for this was suggested several times in the political debate - whereby the deposit would be paid back if the lists reached a certain number of votes. During the debate on the enactment of the PRA, a motion for such a deposit had been tabled in the National Council, and during the 1994 revision, the Federal Council had tabled a motion that would have allowed the cantons to introduce a printing cost contribution or deposit for this purpose. Both proposals failed in the Council plenum; for reasons of democratic policy, there was a reluctance to introduce a financial hurdle for participation in elections.
5 The standard does not achieve the goal of curbing "list and candidate inflation." When Parliament raised the quorum to 50 in 1976, 170 lists with 1947 candidates had run for election in proportional representation cantons in the previous 1975 elections. When parliament raised the quorum a second time in 1993 (to 100, 200, and 400), 248 lists with 2561 candidates had already been on the ballot in the previous 1991 National Council election. In the 2023 National Council elections, 618 lists with 5909 candidates stood for election in the proportional representation cantons.
6 Even smaller outsider groups or lone campaigners generally have no trouble meeting the not very high signature quorum. However, a look at the statistics shows that the massive increase in the number of lists and candidacies is not mainly due to outsider candidacies. In recent years, the number of nominations from parties that are represented in the National Council or have been active in politics for several years has risen sharply - from 368 in 2015 to 458 in 2019 and 553 in 2023. The established parties are running with more and more (e.g. regional, gender- or age-specific) sub-lists. The fact that established parties have been exempt from submitting signatures in accordance with the signature quorum since the 2019 elections may well have contributed to this development, even if they submit more than one election proposal in the constituency (see N 2 above). The 65 lists subsumed by the FSO under "Other" accounted for only 10.5 percent of the lists in 2023. The share of candidates on the "other" lists in the total number of candidacies is even lower (9.1 %). It remains to be seen whether the current signature quorums prevent a few individual candidacies without absolute support in a few cases.
B. Legal comparison
7 The cantons know comparable regulations in their rules for the election of cantonal parliaments. Election proposals must be signed by a minimum number of voters, the number currently varying from 3 (NE) to 50 (GE, TI). Established parties and groups are exempt from the signature quorum under slightly different conditions in some cantons; in this case, the election proposal must be signed by one representative and one deputy. A person may only sign one election proposal and may not withdraw his/her signature.
III. Quorum of signatures
A. Minimum number (para. 1)
8 Each election proposal must be signed by hand by a minimum number of voters with political domicile in the electoral district.
9 Signed by hand means: signed by the voters themselves. The submission of the election proposal with the original signatures is required. Submission of signatures by fax or scan is not sufficient.
10 The voters signing an election proposal must have their political residence in the electoral district. For the candidates, on the other hand, this is not required (cf. OK-Wyler, Art. 22 PRA N. 7). Swiss voters abroad whose electoral commune is located in the electoral district may also sign an election proposal.
11 Candidates may sign their own election proposal if they have their political domicile in the electoral district and are of age at the time of submission of the election proposal. (To be a valid candidate, it is sufficient if they are of age no later than election day). Pursuant to Article 8b para. 2 of the PRA, by signing the election proposal, a candidate simultaneously declares his/her consent to his/her own candidacy within the meaning of Article 22 para. 3 of the PRA.
12 The minimum number of signatures for an election proposal is:
100 in cantons with 2-10 seats; (currently: LU, SZ, ZG, FR, SO, BS, BL, SH, GR, TG, TI, VS, NE, JU).
200 in cantons with 11-20 seats; (currently: SG, AG, VD, GE)
400 in cantons with more than 20 seats. (currently: ZH, BE).
13 These quorums are very low. As of the 2023 National Council elections, they ranged between 0.2% of voters in the cantons of Schaffhausen and Jura and 0.04% of voters in the cantons of Zurich, Lucerne and Vaud.
14 The Venice Commission (European Commission for Democracy through Law), a Council of Europe institution, considered in its 2002 "Code of Conduct on Elections" that the requirement of a certain number of signatures for the submission of a candidacy was not in principle contrary to the principle of universal suffrage. In paragraph 1.3 of the Guidelines, the Commission stated that "the nomination of individual candidates or lists of candidates (...) may be subject to a certain number of signatures." However, the law should "not require signatures of more than 1% of the voters of the constituency." The signature quorums of Article 24 para 1 PRA are far from this threshold.
15 In a decision on the invalidation of an election proposal in the Schwyz cantonal council elections, the Federal Supreme Court protected (also with reference to Article 24 PRA) the requirement of a signature quorum for election proposals. If an election proposal is supported by a certain number of voters, this shows that the proposed person has "at least a minimum of support among the population". In this sense, the signature quorum serves to prevent, or at least to make more difficult, election proposals that are not meant seriously or so-called joke lists. It is in the interest of the voters that only seriously intended election proposals are submitted to them. In order for a signature quorum for election proposals to fulfill its purpose, it must be so large that it prevents the submission of non-serious election proposals or at least effectively impedes them. At the same time, the hurdle associated with the signature quorum must not be excessively high in view of the freedom of choice flowing from Article 34 paragraph 2 FC. In the specific case of the smallest municipality Riemenstalden, which forms its own electoral district, the number of five signatures required from the municipality was very small in absolute terms, but quite high in relation to the only 53 voters of the municipalities (9.4% of the voting population). In view of the purpose of the norm, the Federal Court did not consider the required quorum to be excessively high, even for the smallest electoral district of Riemenstalden.
16 Some cantons require that a certificate of voting rights from the municipality be enclosed for the persons signing the election proposal when it is submitted; in other cantons, the voting rights of the signatories are verified by the electoral authority. If a submitted election proposal falls short of the quorum because individual signatures have to be deleted by the electoral authority, this constitutes a defect within the meaning of Article 29 paragraph 1 PRA according to the circular letter of the Federal Council, which can be rectified within the rectification period. The representative of the election proposal must be given a short grace period to submit the missing signatures (and certificates). In practice, it is also considered a remediable defect if not enough signatures of support were submitted or if certificates of voting rights were missing.
B. Only one nomination (para. 2)
17 A person entitled to vote may not sign more than one ballot proposition.
18 The signature may not be withdrawn after the ballot proposition has been submitted.
19 The name of a person entitled to vote who signs more than one election proposal shall be immediately deleted from all election proposals by the cantonal election authority (Art. 8b para. 3 VPR).
20 According to the Federal Chancellery, the prohibition of withdrawing a single signature implies the prohibition of withdrawing all signatures. It follows that once an election proposal has been submitted, it cannot be withdrawn. If this applies to election proposals signed by a certain number of eligible voters pursuant to Article 24 paragraph 1 PRA, it must also apply by analogy to election proposals signed by the "presiding and managing persons" of a party pursuant to Article 24 paragraphs 3 and 4 PRA. For the future, it should be considered whether - in order to create clarity - it should not be formulated directly and unambiguously in the law that once an election proposal has been submitted, it can no longer be withdrawn. (Analogous to the wording in Article 59b PRA: "A referendum cannot be withdrawn.")
C. Registered Parties (paras. 3 and 4)
21 Paragraph 3 states exceptions to the obligation to provide signature quorums. Accordingly, the quorums under paragraph 1 do not apply to a party that was duly registered with the Federal Chancellery at the end of the year preceding the elections (Art. 76a PRA), provided that it is represented in the National Council for the same constituency in the expiring term or that it obtained at least 3 percent of the votes in the last general election in the same canton. The facilitation applies to all lists of the party concerned in the canton (youth lists, regional lists, lists of the Swiss abroad, etc.)
22 Pursuant to Article 76a para 1 of the PRA, a political party may officially register with the Federal Chancellery if it a) has the legal form of an association within the meaning of Articles 60-79 of the Civil Code and b) is represented under the same name by at least one member in the National Council or by at least three members in three cantonal parliaments. The register of parties is public.
23 According to federal court jurisprudence, the requirement of Article 76 paragraph 1 letter b is only met if the member of the National Council has already been elected as a representative of the party concerned in the last general renewal election. A newly formed party that includes a member of the National Council who was elected as a representative of another party in the last election does not meet the requirements for registration.
24 To be exempt from providing signatures according to the quorum, the party must be duly registered at the end of the year preceding the elections. The registration must be regularly updated. Parties already registered must notify the Federal Chancellery of any changes to their statutes, name and registered office, and the names and addresses of the presiding and executive officers of the federal party. Registered parties that fail to comply with their obligation to report mutations by May 1 of the election year lose the right to exemption from the signature quorums under Article 24 para. 3 and 4 of the PRA.
25 In addition to proper registration, a party must meet another requirement to be exempt from the signature quorum in a canton: It must have been represented in the National Council for the same constituency in the expiring term or have obtained at least 3 percent of the votes in the constituency in the last general election. The results of several lists of the same party are counted together.
26 The exception rule of Article 24 para 3 was created in 2002 and decisively expanded in 2014 (cf. n. 2 above). In its new version, it leads to the fact that in many cantons the required signature quorums only have to be fulfilled for a minority of election proposals. The exception mutates into the rule.
27 A party that fulfills the conditions of paragraph 3 need only submit the legally valid signatures of all candidates according to Article 22 paragraph 3 PRA as well as those of the presiding and executive persons (paragraph 4).
28 The question of who the relevant presiding and managing persons of a party are shall be based on the statutes of the cantonal party.
Bibliography
Muheim Anton, Wahl des Nationalrates, in: Das Bundesgesetz über die politischen Rechte, Veröffentlichungen des Schweizerischen Instituts für Verwaltungskurse an der Hochschule St. Gallen, St. Gallen 1978, S. 65–89.
Steinmann Gerold, Kommentar zum Urteil 1C_213/2017 des Bundesgerichts, in Schweizerisches Zentralblatt für Staats- und Verwaltungsrecht, ZBl 2019, S. 198–208.
Materials
Bericht des Bundesrates vom 13.11.2019 an den Nationalrat über die Nationalratswahlen für die 51. Legislaturperiode (BBl 2019 7461).
Beschluss 314/2023 des Regierungsrates des Kantons Bern vom 22.3.2023 über die Durchführung der Nationalratswahlen vom 22.10.2023.
Botschaft des Bundesrates an die Bundesversammlung zu einem Bundesgesetz über die politischen Rechte vom 9.4.1975 (BBl 1975 I 1317).
Botschaft des Bundesrates über eine Teiländerung der Bundesgesetzgebung über die politischen Rechte vom 1.9.1993 (BBl 1993 III 445).
Botschaft des Bundesrates über eine Änderung des Bundesgesetzes über die politischen Rechte vom 30.11.2001 (BBl 2001 6401).
Botschaft des Bundesrates zur Änderung des Bundesgesetzes über die politischen Rechte vom 29.11.2013 (BBl 2013 9217).
Dekret des Regierungsrates des Kantons Schwyz vom 24.1.2023 für die Nationalratswahlen vom 22.10.2023.
Europäische Kommission für Demokratie durch Recht (Venedig-Kommission): Verhaltenskodex für Wahlen (Code of good practice in electoral matters). Verabschiedet am 5./6.7. und 18./19.10.2002.
Information der Staatskanzlei des Kantons Aargau vom 23.3.2023 zu den Nationalratswahlen 2023: Anleitung zum Wahlvorschlag.
Kreisschreiben des Bundesrates an die Kantonsregierungen vom 19.10.2022 über die Gesamterneuerungswahl des Nationalrates vom 22.10.2023 (BBl 2022 2547) (zit. Kreisschreiben BR NRW 2023).