Switzerland - September 2024

Investigative journalists alleged in September that companies contracted by campaigns to collect signatures for popular initiatives falsified signatures. The Citizen Service (Service Citoyen), an association promoting civic engagement, filed a criminal complaint in June 2023 after noticing irregularities in the list of signatures collected by a company for their campaign.  The Office of the Attorney General and the police have opened a fraud investigation. On 6 September, the Council of States, the upper house of the legislature, separately initiated an examination of the role of the Federal Chancellery, which oversees national elections and verifies the legality of initiatives and referendums. Politicians are calling for reform to protect the integrity of the collection process, including renewed calls for a ban on commercial signature collection (which has been tested at the cantonal level in the past), as well as for electronically verified signature collection.  

Sources: The Federal Assembly, SwissInfo (1), SwissInfo (2), RTS, Service Citoyen