Public service Signatures are said to have been collected without a mandate

The affair surrounding allegedly forged signatures for initiatives and referendums has taken on a new twist. According to the Federal Chancellery, some organizations that collect signatures for money are said to have done so without a mandate and pressured committees to buy them.

This impairs the rights of voters and also the integrity of the collection process, the Federal Chancellery wrote on Tuesday. It has now informed the committees of popular initiatives and referendums at the collection stage.

The Federal Chancellery is referring to a criminal complaint about which it was informed on Friday. According to the complaint, certain organizations that offer to collect signatures for referendums for a fee are alleged to have collected signatures without a mandate. Committees are said to have been pressured into making a purchase.

The problem with this is that if someone signs a petition for a referendum on a form held out by an employee of one of the organizations, the signature may not be submitted because the committee responsible rejects the purchase. In this case, those who support the petition have only supposedly done so, as the Federal Chancellery writes.

The Federal Chancellery wants to prevent this and similar forms of abuse of democratic rights. They are to be taken into account in the announced closer monitoring of signature collection.

SDA