Fr., Okt. 27th 2023
The Swiss press has described the calculation error by the Federal Statistical Office (FSO) as an embarrassment, a debacle and a fiasco. Trust in democracy is at stake in the counting of election data, comment columns said on Thursday.
“Embarrassing!” reads the “Blick” front page on Thursday. Quite in “Blick” style, the newspaper summarized the calculation error of the FSO in one word. Other newspapers also found clear words.
“Democracy lives on trust in those who count,” wrote Tamedia. The ridicule from abroad was less bad than the mistrust that such errors would feed among those susceptible to conspiracy theories, it said. “The model country of democracy should actually get it together to calculate such results correctly,” Tamedia wrote.
The cause of the error is typical of federalist Switzerland, according to Tamedia. Both Appenzell and Glarus provided their data in a different format than the other cantons.
The FSO discovered the error on Tuesday and communicated it on Wednesday, CH Media wrote. “This is unacceptable,” the corresponding commentary said. The follow-up check of the election results was not done until Tuesday, CH Media wrote. The justification that this was done because of the many media inquiries is a pretextual argument that exposes the priorities in the FSO. Such an error should not happen at the outset. The election results would have to be checked for plausibility.
The “Neue Zürcher Zeitung” (NZZ) considers the explanation for the breakdown to be the worst part of the affair. According to it, the program in the background made multiple counts. “Apparently entirely without thorough plausibility checks,” wrote the NZZ.
According to the newspaper, there were first indications of incorrect election data already on election Sunday. Various editorial offices quickly drew the attention of the FSO to the errors. The cantons were to blame, the FSO said. One is in the process of correcting the errors.
According to the NZZ, the problem goes deeper than the evaluation of the individual cantonal data. The processing of election data has long been considered a showcase project for digitization and data culture at the federal level. Switzerland can consider itself lucky that the proponents of electronic voting have not prevailed so far, comments the NZZ. Then it would no longer be possible to look at the ballots again. “If such a technical error happens with e-voting, where this is often no longer possible, the trust in democracy would be gone for good,” wrote the NZZ.
©Keystone/SDA
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