Votes Investigation into possible fraud in signature collections

Commercial companies are alleged to have committed fraud when collecting signatures for popular initiatives. This involves forged signatures. The Office of the Attorney General is investigating suspected electoral fraud.

"Proceedings are currently underway against various natural persons and against persons unknown," the Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland (OAG) announced at the request of the Keystone-SDA news agency. As part of the proceedings in question, the OAG and the Federal Office of Police have carried out house searches and questionings.

The allegations were first reported on Monday by the Tamedia newspapers. They wrote that people behind the Service Citoyen initiative had become suspicious because of the large number of invalid signatures and had filed a criminal complaint. The company Incop had collected the signatures in question in return for money.

In some cases, entire sheets had apparently been copied from older petitions. Incop could not initially be reached by telephone by Keystone-SDA.

No political pattern

The Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland did not comment on which initiatives were involved or against whom the proceedings were directed. It appears that other popular initiatives and commercial signature collectors are also affected.

Vincent Duvoisin, head of the communes and cantons department at the Vaud cantonal administration, told Tamedia newspapers that several communes had already contacted the canton at the beginning of 2019 about possible cases of fraud. The communes were then asked to systematically report irregularities.

According to the canton of Vaud, no clear political pattern emerged. Among the dozen or so petitions for referendums that were found to have the most falsified signatures were those from the right-wing conservative camp as well as those with ecological concerns - and initiatives that could not be clearly identified in terms of party politics.

Federal Chancellery is active

The initiatives concerned included the pro-nuclear initiative "Stop the blackout", the SVP neutrality initiative, the livestock farming initiative and the initiative for a ban on the import of cruelly produced fur products.

One of the criminal complaints on the subject comes from the Federal Chancellery, as confirmed by the latter on request. The complaint was submitted in 2022 and has been amended several times since then. "The reports of suspected cases concern around a dozen federal popular initiatives to varying degrees," wrote spokesperson Urs Bruderer.

The main focus is on signature lists from municipalities in French-speaking Switzerland, although since last winter there have also been an increasing number of suspicious reports from German-speaking Switzerland.

Ban called for

According to Bruderer, it is crucial for the Federal Chancellery that suspected cases of signature forgery are reported: "The signature lists in question have all been made available to the prosecution authorities."

Initial reactions called for a ban on the commercial collection of signatures. The Greens wanted to try to achieve such a ban as quickly as possible, wrote Zurich Green National Councillor Balthasar Glättli on the X platform (formerly Twitter). "Democracy for sale" must have limits.

SDA