First time voter here. I was surprised to see that the Stimmzettelkuvert has six holes in it in Zürich. When I put the candidate sheet inside one of the first names was clearly visible through one of the holes allowing the identification of which party it was for, which seems to defeat the purpose of the envelope.
I thought it would be easy to find an explanation for this but none was in any of the provided documentation.
I did find this old news article from when the change was first made.
It’s vague and implies it’s so someone can quickly tell if there are still any sheets left inside the envelope via visual inspection. But is this really worth compromising the purpose of the envelope? The cantons don’t seem to agree on how many holes are required, and the article also ends by saying:
In addition, it is very unlikely that one can recognize a “yes”, a “no” or a name through the small holes.
… but this is not the case in my experience.
Is it really safe to have so many holes in the voting envelope?
byu/mike_hearn inSwitzerland
Posted by mike_hearn
5 Comments
Easy way out, if you are paranoid: go to the poll and drop it yourself. You will see that you hand over first the “Stimmrechtsausweis” (proving that you are allowed to vote) and then drop the envelope into the urn. No association of you as a person with your votes, unless you basically put the envelope in the face of one of the persons overseeing it.
As for mail in: there are always several persons around and separation of Stimmrechtsausweis and vote envelope is basically the first step.
I put the grey envelope and the other paper with my signature inside the white envelope the stuff came in. It says behind it to not break it and reseal it. You wanna drop it off at any post box. There, no holes!
I can only say that the explanation in the article is correct, but don’t know if the vote is visible. In Bern, there are only four holes, which might improve things.
The first step at the office is that the „Stimmrechtsausweis“ is checked. If it is not signed, or signed by a different person, the vote is discarded.
Then, the „Stimmrechtsausweis“ and votes envelope are separated, in order to preserve anonymity. Only then is the vote envelope opened and the vote counted. To make sure all envelopes are emptied, they are stacked. If one can see through the holes of the whole stack, all is good.
This is different in every canton and maybe Gemeinde too, there isn’t even a second envelope in many.
If the goal is just to check whether there’s something in the envelope, surely one hole in the middle would suffice?
Anyway, accidentally not emptying an envelope (but remembering to check the hole) seems… unlikely.