Schaffhausen High Court to decide soon on election appeal
Published: Saturday, Jun 8th 2024, 09:30
Volver a Live Feed
An election complaint is still pending against Simon Stocker (SP), a member of the Schaffhausen Council of States who was elected last November. The Schaffhausen High Court will question the complainant on Tuesday. The decision is expected to be made in the coming weeks.
After an intensive election campaign, 43-year-old Stocker won the seat in the Council of States from Thomas Minder, the non-party father of the "rip-off initiative", in the second round of voting. Since then, Stocker has held the office normally - but to a certain extent "with reservations" due to an election complaint that is still pending.
The complaint concerns whether Stocker fulfilled the eligibility requirements at all. As reported by "Weltwoche" a few days after his election, Stocker lived mainly in the city of Zurich with his family at the time of the election. He had only rented a small apartment in Schaffhausen so that he could register there and run for the Council of States.
Stocker quickly denied the accusations and claimed that the family's main place of residence was in Schaffhausen. They needed the apartment in Zurich so that his wife could commute to her job in the canton of Aargau.
Wife and child were registered in Zurich
The complainant, on the other hand, stated that Stocker's child attended a daycare center in Zurich. His wife and child were resident in Zurich. Against this background, it seemed unlikely that Stocker actually lived in Schaffhausen.
The Schaffhausen cantonal council dismissed the complaint after just a few days. It based its decision mainly on Stocker's registration in the residents' register of the city of Schaffhausen. The decision was appealed to the High Court before the end of 2023.
As comparable cases are rare, the question arises as to which rules actually apply and how they should be applied. There is an established practice for determining the actual place of residence in tax law, for example - whether and how its rules can be applied in the present case, however, is completely open.
Complaint possibly filed too late
In the case of the election complaint against Stocker, the question arises as to whether it was even submitted in time before the substantive aspects are clarified. The three-day deadline after publication of the election results was missed.
Instead, the complainant invokes an exception that also allows a later submission, namely three days "after discovery of the reason for the complaint".
The complainant claims that he only found out about Stocker's residency problem from the "Weltwoche" article. The Schaffhausen High Court intends to investigate this point, among others, at the hearing today, Tuesday, which is open to the public.
It was well known in Schaffhausen that Stocker initially moved to Zurich after resigning from Schaffhausen City Council. His actual place of residence during the election campaign in 2023 was not a big issue in the public eye.
A decision by the Schaffhausen High Court on Tuesday is not expected. However, as the President of the High Court, Annette Dolge, told the "Schaffhauser Nachrichten" newspaper, she expects a ruling before the summer vacation. The decision can then be appealed to the Federal Supreme Court.
©Keystone/SDA
Spanish 
English 
German 
French 
Arabic