The Correspondents’ Club is interested in the referendum. This voting method is defended in France by some presidential candidates who would like to develop it. Direction Switzerland and the United States.
In Switzerland, a real moment of breathing in democracy
It is the country par excellence of the referendum which is cited by all the candidates when it comes to praising the merits of participatory democracy. Switzerland and its famous federal votes. Four times a year, the Swiss are indeed invited to comment on a whole host of subjects ranging from the health pass through the purchase of combat aircraft or the end of nuclear power.
A distinction must be made between two types of votes. On the one hand, there are those that can be described as “real” referendums with, on the one hand, compulsory referendums, that is when Parliament wants to modify the Constitution. On the other hand, optional referendums when citizens want to repeal a law. The condition is to collect 50,000 signatures in 100 days to trigger the vote. Then there are the famous popular initiatives which aim to change the Constitution. There you have to get 100,000 signatures in less than 18 months. If so, the government has an obligation to submit the text to a vote. It is accepted if it obtains the double majority of both voters and cantons.
The system works but it is not perfect. Already because it is true that participation is often low. On average, less than one in two voters. It must be said that some subjects are sometimes quite dry. In particular tax reforms that even journalists have trouble making intelligible. I plead guilty. And then, in recent years, the votes have often served as a platform for the right-wing nationalist party UDC. Who has multiplied initiatives against immigrants. Sometimes it passes, we remember the anti-minaret initiative. Other times it breaks. As when the party wanted to put Swiss law before international law. But we must remember one thing: this whole system is based on a great capacity for compromise on the part of the Swiss who generally accept the verdict of the ballot box without batting an eyelid.
In the United States, voters are solicited every year
There is not an election in the United States without a referendum question being asked. On the ballot, after the names of the candidates to become sheriff, academy president, judges, governor or president are also often a list of questions. In 2020, 124 referendum questions were asked. For example, in Mississippi there was one to change the flag emblem and remove the Confederate symbol, in Oregon to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of drugs, including heroin, cocaine or methamphetamine, and in five states to legalize marijuana.
The referendum exists in all the country but the difference between the States is at the level of who is at the initiative. Thus 26 States allow citizens to create these questions and therefore to generate a popular initiative referendum. If they get enough signatures. This number varies between each State, it generally represents between 5% and 10% of the voters of one of the last elections. Less participatory democracy in 23 other states which only use these referendums to validate or invalidate laws passed by local parliaments.
On the scope of these texts, everything depends once again on the State. Thus in Texas in 2021, eight proposals were put to the vote such as this referendum which authorizes charities affiliated with sports clubs to organize raffles on rodeo sites. Another example is a more controversial piece of legislation that amends the Texas constitution to deny all state authorities the right to limit masses or religious organizations. These eight proposals were all approved, but it must be said that this type of referendum does not attract crowds. In 2021, in Texas, nearly 1.5 million people voted, but this represents only 8% of voters.