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I edited this page for language as per a request on cleanup. Excellent article. I cleaned up the English. There were only a few typos and verb tense errors. Is English your first language? If not then bravo! This is very well written. I had some comments:
"When 30 percent of all adult Swiss citizens cast their votes, actually only some 1.7 million inhabitants of Switzerland care about the referendum."
- I deleted this text because it is NPOV, because it is impossible to verify if Swiss people care about the referendum or not.
Yes, the "only" is not neutral. I have just calculated that in the US the number of people who vote on a federal law is 0.0002 percent of the population. If in Switzerland 60 percent willingly abstain then they are in effect saying that they are content for 40 percent of their fellow-citizens to decide the issue for them. You couldn't claim the same for that 99.9998 percent of Americans who are not given any chance to vote on a federal law. Similar can be said for almost all so-called democratic countries. I am not suggesting this viewpoint be part of the article, only pointing it out to show up the bias in "only 40 percent". - Pepper 150.203.2.85 00:33, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
"Say a parliament has 100 seats, and the constituency contains 8 of those seats. First, the party votes are counted. If the Liberals have gained 43 percent of all party votes in this constituency. 43% of eight seats is 3.44, so the Liberals receive three seats. These three seats are then distributed among the three Liberal candidates who received the most candidate votes."
I deleted this because I don’t think it currently meets Wikipedia standards. It is not encyclopedic to include examples. Maybe if it was re-worded. I am rather new to Wikipedia and if I am in error then please replace it.
There is nothing wrong with examples. For example check out the excellent "game theory" entry which is full of them. The English for majorz is majoritarian. Essentially it is brought about by having single member electoratal districts as in most parliaments of the Anglo world (except New Zealand which since 1996 has PR). On the other hand, proportional representation (PR) is created by having multi-member electoral districts. In majoritarian systems a minority vote can give a party the majority in the assembly. (The name is dumb but we are stuck with it - the person who wears most of the blame is Dutch-American political scientist Arend Lijphart who is otherwise a model of clear thinking.) In a PR system, the majority in parliament is formed from the parties (almost invariably more than one) which got a majority of votes. The electorates have to have a minimum of 5 members for this to have a chance to be realised. The (effective) number of members is referred to as the "magnitude" - ie in majoritarian the magnitude is 1; in a PR system it will be 5, 7, or more (an odd number is generally preferred for technical reasons).
Keimzelle is in error: in PR the voter chooses a party. In majoritarian systems (eg the US, UK, Canada, Australia) you choose a person. The effect is that a majoritarian MP represents people and a geographical area, whereas under PR the MP is representing an ideology or interest. - Pepper 150.203.2.85 00:59, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
How do the municipalities know the addresses of the their citizens if no one registers? When do they get these addresses? Please clarify.
If people are running for parliament, the ballot shows as many lines as there are posts to fill. The following rules apply:
This section is confusing. I am not certain to whom the rules apply. Are these rules for the voter to follow? If so how come they can vote for the same candidate twice?
-- Keimzelle 15:50, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
To sort it all out: Here's a party list for a parliament election. It's the list number 02, which belongs to the party with the rather funny name "B". As you see, the first candidate ("Stefan Stellvertreter") is stroke through; so he doesn't get a candidate vote. "Pierre Personne" is a candidate from another party (his number doesn't begin with "02"). He gets a candidate vote. Then candidate number 0208, Amalie Alias is named doubly, so she gets two candidate votes. The last line on the ballot is left empty by this specific voter because he thinks that no other candidate deserves his support. Because the voter casts the ready-made list from party B, so this party gets a party vote. This here is a free list where the voter simply does the same... but he can leave the party affiliation blank so that candidates, but no party get the votes. -- Keimzelle 15:50, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
The article would also be improved if there were a brief explanation of what a canton because non-Swiss people (like myself) probably don’t know what it is (like myself).
This line is confusing: The ballot has only one line where the voter has to place the full name of any mature citizen that lives in the said canton.
Does this mean that there is only one line on the entire ballot or only one line that can have the name of any mature citizen? Please clarify. Hdstubbs 01:23, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
The information in this article would make a great addition to the main Switzerland article. I propose a merge, and would like to hear the input of the editors of this article.
After reading the articles on Switzerland I think we should merge this artile with Politics of Switzerland instead of with Switzerland. What does everyone think? Hdstubbs 02:51, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
Alright I agree that I've gone a little wiki nuts with the merge tags but after looking at the Swiss politics articles I am think that the best thing to do would be to merge this page with the Elections in Switzerland page and then either link to or merge with the overall Politics of Switzerland page. Hdstubbs 03:15, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
In Switzerland, the term "votation" indicates a question where the Swiss people will have to answer by either "yes" or "no" (e.g. "Do you accept the referendum XYZ?", "Do you accept the modification of the [some date] of the law XYZ", etc.) whereas the term "election" indicates the election of candidates (e.g. for cantonal governments). Considering this, I propose we keep both Voting in Switzerland and Elections in Switzerland and that we only talk about the different types of referendum in the former and about elections in the latter. Does this seem okay with you? Orgyn ( talk) 18:55, 24 May 2013 (UTC)
I took away this subheading because there are no voting machines in Switzerland...it is misleading to have a heading about something that doesn't exist. I changed it to polling booths. Hdstubbs 19:25, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
"If a voter uses a ready-made party list, additionally a party vote is cast for the specific party."
I have more clarifications to ask for. :) What is a party vote? Is it different from a regular vote? Does it just mean that a voter used the party list or does it give something else to the party?
Also, I went over the whole article again and copy-edited it. I changed some headings and clarified some stuff. Would one of you guys from Switzerland please re-read the article to make certain that I didn't make any mistakes because I know nothing about Swiss voting. I just tried to make what I thought you guys were trying to say more clear.
Hdstubbs 19:41, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
Any thoughts? Are both correct? Hdstubbs 03:05, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
I am retracting my original suggestion that this article be merged into the Switzerland article, and voting that we incorporate the content of this article and that of Elections in Switzerland under the title Elections in Switzerland. I have begun a discussion at Talk:Elections in Switzerland (per Reisio's reminder) -- please post your comments there. Adhall 06:34, 1 February 2006 (UTC) I agree and have taken down the merge with Politics of Switzerland tag. Hdstubbs 18:29, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
Reaction: I don't think that it's a good odea to merge the article with "elections in Switzerland" since most of the votes held in the country are precisely NOT elections, but initiatives and referendums (Caïus Gracchus) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Caïus Gracchus ( talk • contribs) 15:43, 5 November 2014 (UTC)
This is in contrast to Germany, which does not know neither candidate votes or editing of party lists - if a German candidate can manage to get the first line on the party list, his election is guaranteed - except his party doesn't get any seat in the party vote. In Germany, influential or senior politicians usually get the upper lines on the party lists.
I deleted this because it seemed to be more about Germany than about Switzerland Hdstubbs 20:24, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
All the information under polling booths was about how the votes are counted and not about the Polling Booths. Does anyone have any information about what happens in a polling booths? Hdstubbs 02:30, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
The statement that Swiss elections are unique because they do not use voting machines, but use all paper voting is incorrect. This is certainly the case in Great Britain and I suspect (don't know for sure, however) in many other democracies (e.g. much of Europe, India, etc.). I will therefore remove it, however I'm not sure whether it would be best to remove the uniqueness or the paper voting (since the latter is mentioned later in the article). I went with my instinct and rewrote this paragraph removing the reference to uniqueness, but if you feel this is inappropriate, please feel free to revise, possibly removing the reference to paper ballots completely, since other means of voting are referred to later in the article. I've also done some minor tidying up, but nothing comprehensive (occured to me half way through, that I'm probably wasting my time if this article is to be merged with "elections in Switzerland", which BTW, seems an eminently sensible idea). Brianpie 16:06, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
The introduction still appears to state that Paper Ballots are unique, as it has the phrase "In addtion," before the sentence which presents it, connecting it to the "unique" statement before. I think the whole sentence would be better removed, as the details are further on in the article, and there is no uniqueness or surprise that would make me expect to see Paper Ballots as a headline point in the introduction. 178.198.186.153 ( talk) 19:35, 20 November 2011 (UTC)
"Only 25% to 45% of all mature citizens typically cast their votes, but controversial proposals (such as EU membership or abolishing the army) have seen voter turnouts of about 60%."
Does "mature" citizens mean, all those able to vote? I think it should read
"Only 25% to 45% of those eligible typically cast their votes,...etc"
"mature citizens" is a bit of a confusing term. It would usually mean old people, or people above middle-age, no-one 18 would be called mature in English. I understand this might be because English is not the first language of most of the contributors!
81.101.58.131 19:51, 13 August 2006 (UTC) Greenaum
I think you have forgot to put in this article in the themes of the posibility for making a initiative (with 100'000 signatures)... Mäderm 13:37, 10 june 2007 (UTC)
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Cheers.— cyberbot II Talk to my owner:Online 14:43, 14 January 2016 (UTC)
There are some odd choices of languages in this article. It starts out decent enough:
But then it turns into a bulletin forum post:
How about "As such, the Swiss system is called a semi-direct democracy."? But then it gets weird (and incoherent):
In the context (of the Swiss voting system being unique), it would almost seem as if the author is amazed that voting is done on paper. Except for the fact, that most European countries do voting on paper. This sentence seems more appropriate for further down in the article where we get into the nitty-gritty of the process.
Which reminds me, it's not just in the opening where the tone is off, further down we have the following sentence:
"So-called"? Are we mocking proportional representation now? Why? Is alternative vote or first past the post objectively better? Also the sentence is a bit lacking. Surely it should be "a proportional representation allocation of seats takes place". A representation doesn't just take place.
These are just some examples, there are numerous issues with this article. Incoherent lists, out of context mentions and loaded words that make the text seem sceptical of the system for no particular reason. -- Svip pong 05:10, 5 June 2016 (UTC)
For your information: Talk:Swiss minaret referendum, 2009#Requested move 24 June 2018.
83.228.178.55 ( talk) 10:47, 24 June 2018 (UTC).
On June 27, 2018, the Federal Chancellery released the Experts Group report on e-Voting. This page should be updated with their findings. (Requires a French or German speaker to read the report.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jra ( talk • contribs) 06:59, 29 June 2018 (UTC)
Types of election 41.190.30.115 ( talk) 19:27, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
This article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||
|
I edited this page for language as per a request on cleanup. Excellent article. I cleaned up the English. There were only a few typos and verb tense errors. Is English your first language? If not then bravo! This is very well written. I had some comments:
"When 30 percent of all adult Swiss citizens cast their votes, actually only some 1.7 million inhabitants of Switzerland care about the referendum."
- I deleted this text because it is NPOV, because it is impossible to verify if Swiss people care about the referendum or not.
Yes, the "only" is not neutral. I have just calculated that in the US the number of people who vote on a federal law is 0.0002 percent of the population. If in Switzerland 60 percent willingly abstain then they are in effect saying that they are content for 40 percent of their fellow-citizens to decide the issue for them. You couldn't claim the same for that 99.9998 percent of Americans who are not given any chance to vote on a federal law. Similar can be said for almost all so-called democratic countries. I am not suggesting this viewpoint be part of the article, only pointing it out to show up the bias in "only 40 percent". - Pepper 150.203.2.85 00:33, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
"Say a parliament has 100 seats, and the constituency contains 8 of those seats. First, the party votes are counted. If the Liberals have gained 43 percent of all party votes in this constituency. 43% of eight seats is 3.44, so the Liberals receive three seats. These three seats are then distributed among the three Liberal candidates who received the most candidate votes."
I deleted this because I don’t think it currently meets Wikipedia standards. It is not encyclopedic to include examples. Maybe if it was re-worded. I am rather new to Wikipedia and if I am in error then please replace it.
There is nothing wrong with examples. For example check out the excellent "game theory" entry which is full of them. The English for majorz is majoritarian. Essentially it is brought about by having single member electoratal districts as in most parliaments of the Anglo world (except New Zealand which since 1996 has PR). On the other hand, proportional representation (PR) is created by having multi-member electoral districts. In majoritarian systems a minority vote can give a party the majority in the assembly. (The name is dumb but we are stuck with it - the person who wears most of the blame is Dutch-American political scientist Arend Lijphart who is otherwise a model of clear thinking.) In a PR system, the majority in parliament is formed from the parties (almost invariably more than one) which got a majority of votes. The electorates have to have a minimum of 5 members for this to have a chance to be realised. The (effective) number of members is referred to as the "magnitude" - ie in majoritarian the magnitude is 1; in a PR system it will be 5, 7, or more (an odd number is generally preferred for technical reasons).
Keimzelle is in error: in PR the voter chooses a party. In majoritarian systems (eg the US, UK, Canada, Australia) you choose a person. The effect is that a majoritarian MP represents people and a geographical area, whereas under PR the MP is representing an ideology or interest. - Pepper 150.203.2.85 00:59, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
How do the municipalities know the addresses of the their citizens if no one registers? When do they get these addresses? Please clarify.
If people are running for parliament, the ballot shows as many lines as there are posts to fill. The following rules apply:
This section is confusing. I am not certain to whom the rules apply. Are these rules for the voter to follow? If so how come they can vote for the same candidate twice?
-- Keimzelle 15:50, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
To sort it all out: Here's a party list for a parliament election. It's the list number 02, which belongs to the party with the rather funny name "B". As you see, the first candidate ("Stefan Stellvertreter") is stroke through; so he doesn't get a candidate vote. "Pierre Personne" is a candidate from another party (his number doesn't begin with "02"). He gets a candidate vote. Then candidate number 0208, Amalie Alias is named doubly, so she gets two candidate votes. The last line on the ballot is left empty by this specific voter because he thinks that no other candidate deserves his support. Because the voter casts the ready-made list from party B, so this party gets a party vote. This here is a free list where the voter simply does the same... but he can leave the party affiliation blank so that candidates, but no party get the votes. -- Keimzelle 15:50, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
The article would also be improved if there were a brief explanation of what a canton because non-Swiss people (like myself) probably don’t know what it is (like myself).
This line is confusing: The ballot has only one line where the voter has to place the full name of any mature citizen that lives in the said canton.
Does this mean that there is only one line on the entire ballot or only one line that can have the name of any mature citizen? Please clarify. Hdstubbs 01:23, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
The information in this article would make a great addition to the main Switzerland article. I propose a merge, and would like to hear the input of the editors of this article.
After reading the articles on Switzerland I think we should merge this artile with Politics of Switzerland instead of with Switzerland. What does everyone think? Hdstubbs 02:51, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
Alright I agree that I've gone a little wiki nuts with the merge tags but after looking at the Swiss politics articles I am think that the best thing to do would be to merge this page with the Elections in Switzerland page and then either link to or merge with the overall Politics of Switzerland page. Hdstubbs 03:15, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
In Switzerland, the term "votation" indicates a question where the Swiss people will have to answer by either "yes" or "no" (e.g. "Do you accept the referendum XYZ?", "Do you accept the modification of the [some date] of the law XYZ", etc.) whereas the term "election" indicates the election of candidates (e.g. for cantonal governments). Considering this, I propose we keep both Voting in Switzerland and Elections in Switzerland and that we only talk about the different types of referendum in the former and about elections in the latter. Does this seem okay with you? Orgyn ( talk) 18:55, 24 May 2013 (UTC)
I took away this subheading because there are no voting machines in Switzerland...it is misleading to have a heading about something that doesn't exist. I changed it to polling booths. Hdstubbs 19:25, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
"If a voter uses a ready-made party list, additionally a party vote is cast for the specific party."
I have more clarifications to ask for. :) What is a party vote? Is it different from a regular vote? Does it just mean that a voter used the party list or does it give something else to the party?
Also, I went over the whole article again and copy-edited it. I changed some headings and clarified some stuff. Would one of you guys from Switzerland please re-read the article to make certain that I didn't make any mistakes because I know nothing about Swiss voting. I just tried to make what I thought you guys were trying to say more clear.
Hdstubbs 19:41, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
Any thoughts? Are both correct? Hdstubbs 03:05, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
I am retracting my original suggestion that this article be merged into the Switzerland article, and voting that we incorporate the content of this article and that of Elections in Switzerland under the title Elections in Switzerland. I have begun a discussion at Talk:Elections in Switzerland (per Reisio's reminder) -- please post your comments there. Adhall 06:34, 1 February 2006 (UTC) I agree and have taken down the merge with Politics of Switzerland tag. Hdstubbs 18:29, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
Reaction: I don't think that it's a good odea to merge the article with "elections in Switzerland" since most of the votes held in the country are precisely NOT elections, but initiatives and referendums (Caïus Gracchus) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Caïus Gracchus ( talk • contribs) 15:43, 5 November 2014 (UTC)
This is in contrast to Germany, which does not know neither candidate votes or editing of party lists - if a German candidate can manage to get the first line on the party list, his election is guaranteed - except his party doesn't get any seat in the party vote. In Germany, influential or senior politicians usually get the upper lines on the party lists.
I deleted this because it seemed to be more about Germany than about Switzerland Hdstubbs 20:24, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
All the information under polling booths was about how the votes are counted and not about the Polling Booths. Does anyone have any information about what happens in a polling booths? Hdstubbs 02:30, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
The statement that Swiss elections are unique because they do not use voting machines, but use all paper voting is incorrect. This is certainly the case in Great Britain and I suspect (don't know for sure, however) in many other democracies (e.g. much of Europe, India, etc.). I will therefore remove it, however I'm not sure whether it would be best to remove the uniqueness or the paper voting (since the latter is mentioned later in the article). I went with my instinct and rewrote this paragraph removing the reference to uniqueness, but if you feel this is inappropriate, please feel free to revise, possibly removing the reference to paper ballots completely, since other means of voting are referred to later in the article. I've also done some minor tidying up, but nothing comprehensive (occured to me half way through, that I'm probably wasting my time if this article is to be merged with "elections in Switzerland", which BTW, seems an eminently sensible idea). Brianpie 16:06, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
The introduction still appears to state that Paper Ballots are unique, as it has the phrase "In addtion," before the sentence which presents it, connecting it to the "unique" statement before. I think the whole sentence would be better removed, as the details are further on in the article, and there is no uniqueness or surprise that would make me expect to see Paper Ballots as a headline point in the introduction. 178.198.186.153 ( talk) 19:35, 20 November 2011 (UTC)
"Only 25% to 45% of all mature citizens typically cast their votes, but controversial proposals (such as EU membership or abolishing the army) have seen voter turnouts of about 60%."
Does "mature" citizens mean, all those able to vote? I think it should read
"Only 25% to 45% of those eligible typically cast their votes,...etc"
"mature citizens" is a bit of a confusing term. It would usually mean old people, or people above middle-age, no-one 18 would be called mature in English. I understand this might be because English is not the first language of most of the contributors!
81.101.58.131 19:51, 13 August 2006 (UTC) Greenaum
I think you have forgot to put in this article in the themes of the posibility for making a initiative (with 100'000 signatures)... Mäderm 13:37, 10 june 2007 (UTC)
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Cheers.— cyberbot II Talk to my owner:Online 14:43, 14 January 2016 (UTC)
There are some odd choices of languages in this article. It starts out decent enough:
But then it turns into a bulletin forum post:
How about "As such, the Swiss system is called a semi-direct democracy."? But then it gets weird (and incoherent):
In the context (of the Swiss voting system being unique), it would almost seem as if the author is amazed that voting is done on paper. Except for the fact, that most European countries do voting on paper. This sentence seems more appropriate for further down in the article where we get into the nitty-gritty of the process.
Which reminds me, it's not just in the opening where the tone is off, further down we have the following sentence:
"So-called"? Are we mocking proportional representation now? Why? Is alternative vote or first past the post objectively better? Also the sentence is a bit lacking. Surely it should be "a proportional representation allocation of seats takes place". A representation doesn't just take place.
These are just some examples, there are numerous issues with this article. Incoherent lists, out of context mentions and loaded words that make the text seem sceptical of the system for no particular reason. -- Svip pong 05:10, 5 June 2016 (UTC)
For your information: Talk:Swiss minaret referendum, 2009#Requested move 24 June 2018.
83.228.178.55 ( talk) 10:47, 24 June 2018 (UTC).
On June 27, 2018, the Federal Chancellery released the Experts Group report on e-Voting. This page should be updated with their findings. (Requires a French or German speaker to read the report.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jra ( talk • contribs) 06:59, 29 June 2018 (UTC)
Types of election 41.190.30.115 ( talk) 19:27, 19 January 2022 (UTC)