The Swiss cabinet has given the green light for the cantons of Geneva, Neuchâtel, Basel City and Lucerne to offer electronic voting to registered citizens abroad. But proposals by nine other cantons were rejected due to security concerns. Around 34,000 Swiss citizens living abroad who are registered with the four cantons will be able to vote electronically in the federal elections scheduled for October 18. The voting systems in place will allow individual verification of votes and a personalised code provided to voters will help them verify if their vote has been recorded correctly or not.
However, the cabinet rejected a similar attempt by of a consortium of nine Swiss cantons to extend e-voting to Swiss abroad. The cantons are Zurich, Glarus, Fribourg, Solothurn, Schaffhausen, St Gallen, Graubünden, Aargau and Thurgau.
The reason cited was the presence of technical flaws that affected voting secrecy. Even though it is possible to resolve these flaws, the cabinet felt there wasn’t enough time to do it before the elections, as the system should have met all the requirements by July 1.
In a statement, the cabinet affirmed that it would roll out e-voting in a phased manner but on the basis of the principle “security over speed”.
Full Article: Government puts the brakes on e-voting – SWI swissinfo.ch.