Complaints against referendums should go directly to the Federal Supreme Court
Published: Friday, Aug 9th 2024, 18:00
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Complaints concerning votes and elections should be able to be submitted directly to the Federal Supreme Court and no longer first to a cantonal government. After submitting an amendment to the law for consultation between December and April, the Federal Council is now examining the results.
The Bernese Social Democrat and former member of the Council of States Hans Stöckli had criticized in a motion that complaints against irregularities in federal votes must currently be submitted to a cantonal government, even if the complaint contains proposals or concerns matters that do not fall within the remit of the cantonal government.
In such a case, the cantonal government must make a formal decision not to intervene, which in turn can be referred to the Federal Supreme Court. The Council of States lamented that this formalism leads to complainants and authorities treading water and pointed out the loss of time, which sometimes even prevents timely intervention before the vote.
The Federal Council agreed with this and recalled in its explanatory report on the consultation that the Federal Supreme Court had also pointed out these procedural shortcomings on several occasions.
Only one vote declared invalid
In the past, the Federal Supreme Court has been very reluctant to annul referendums. Since it was founded in 1848, it has only annulled a result once. In 2019, it declared the 2016 vote on the popular initiative of the CVP (now Die Mitte) entitled "For marriage and family - against the marriage penalty" invalid because the Federal Council had provided false information during the campaign.
The Federal Supreme Court ruled in favor of repeating the vote. However, the CVP had announced that it would forego this and launch a new initiative instead.
Another appeal against a vote has already been submitted to the Federal Supreme Court in the past: The SP demanded the annulment of the vote on the second package of corporate tax reforms, which had only been accepted by a very narrow margin of 50.5 percent in 2008 - just as narrowly as the 2022 vote on raising the retirement age for women from 64 to 65.
At the time, the SP based its complaint on the fact that the Federal Council had massively underestimated the decline in tax revenue for the Confederation. The federal judges dismissed the complaint on the grounds of legal certainty, as the reform had already come into force.
©Keystone/SDA
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