Swiss Nationwide Initiative, Draft
ATTENTION SWISS CITIZENS - WE NEED YOU!
SUBJECT: How to proceed in order to launch a Swiss nationwide initiative:
DRAFT VERSION. MAY CONTAIN ERRORS.WILL BE UPDATED REGULARLY.
Requirements:
3 Swiss citizens over 20 years old
1. Create initiative committee. Write initiative paper (proposed change of Law, usually in Swiss constitution) 3 Swiss citizens need to form this committee and sign the initiative.
2. The signed initiative paper needs to be sent to the Bundeskanzlei in Berne, Switzerland
3. The Bundeskanzlei will verify the validity of the initiative. Usually no problem. (Example: initiative to remove military was valid)
4. The Bundeskanzlei will then send back to authorisation to start getting signatures. 100,000 valid signatures of Swiss citizens are required and 2 years time is allowed to get these signatures. In order to get 100,000 valid signatures, about 115,000 signatures are required, as usually 10-15 % are not valid. All signatures have to be gathered by community (Example Bern is a community, but the little Ostermundigen next to Berne is also a community). Then the signatures for each community need to be sent back to the community for official validation. The community then sends back the validated signatures to the initiative committee.
5. As soon as the 100,000 signatures are gathered, the are sent back to the Bundeskanzlei in Berne.
6. A second validation of the initiative is made by the parliament in Berne
7. If all is OK, the whole Swiss population is then asked to vote on the initiative
Notes:
It is possible to get the 100,000 signatures. With some effort. Swiss are usually very open to sign any kind of initiative that sounds remotely interesting.It is difficult to pass the popular vote. Most initiatives (about 95%) get rejected by the population [edit: even if this effort fails the consolation is that...] popular initiative is a GREAT way to raise this awareness.
Getting popular people to support an initiative can help a lot. Dr. Roessler would be an ideal candidate Getting the signatures requires people. As far as I know, the government has to allow public space (on high frequency places) to build stands, to display information material etc.
Tags: Bundeskanzlei, Initiative, Swiss
September 1st, 2008 at 2:16 pm
This is not going to work, I’m afraid. Popular initiatives can only change the constitution, not individual laws, this is why Swiss citizens are always that sceptical about initiatives: The prospect of having a sentence like “It is forbidden to maintain a Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland” in your country’s CONSTITUTION appears quite daunting to everybody…
And, mind you, the Swiss population is generally quite educated and not likely to fall prey to unsubstantiated fringe theories — the recent ECHR “non-action” was quite noted here as well…
Regarding the notes: “It is possible to get the 100,000 signatures. With some effort. Swiss are usually very open to sign any kind of initiative that sounds remotely interesting.” Whomever wrote this is deeply misinformed about Swiss politics… A *lot* of initiatives here fail already before the average citizen knows about them, simply because the committee did not have the funds to generate enough publicity for it to be even so much as mentioned in the media…
September 2nd, 2008 at 12:21 am
To Swiss Citizen:
‘This is not going to work, I’m afraid.’
Are you afraid it would not work, or are you afraid it might?
‘the Swiss population is generally quite educated and not likely to fall prey to unsubstantiated fringe theories — the recent ECHR “non-action” was quite noted here as well…’
Was noted where? Here in Switzerland? By whom? And who sais this is about ‘unsubstantiated fringe theories’
‘It is forbidden to maintain a Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland”’
No. I would prefer something like: It is forbidden to operate the LHC AND to have the CERN here in Switzerland
admin - notepad
September 2nd, 2008 at 8:09 am
If you are a Swiss citizen and do not believe the misinformation of Swiss Citizen above, if you are concerned about the LHC and would prefer courage to fear - leave a comment on http://WWW.STOPCERN.CH or contact me
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