According to the current Swiss Constitution, people with a “mental illness or weakness of mind” or people “who, due to a lasting incapacity for discernment, are protected by a curatorship of general scope or by a mandate due to incapacity” are deprived of their civil rights.
On Monday, the National Council accepted a commission motion aimed at changing the Constitution so that these people can participate completely in democratic life. The association Inclusion Handicap welcomed this decision which was taken by 109 votes against 68. The opposition came from the ranks of the right (UDC and PLR). Some elected officials believe that people who do not have the ability to deal with their own business do not have the necessary discernment to forge an opinion.
According to Inclusion Handicap some 16,000 Swiss and Swiss are affected today by this deprivation of civil rights. The Federal Council published in 2023 a report on the political participation of people with disabilities in Switzerland, which recognizes a violation of the UN Convention, which Switzerland ratified in 2014.
Federal advisor Beat Jans supported this motion on Monday, specifying that certain cantons, such as Geneva and Appenzell Rhodes-Exterior, had already suppressed this ban. More recently, the canton of Soleure has also decided to give the right to vote to all people with disabilities. Delphine Klopfenstein Broginni (V/GE) recalled that the Geneva population had voted in 2020 to 75% in favor of a modification of the Constitution in the same sense as the motion debated at the national level.
The Council of States must now decide. If the Constitution must be modified, the people will also be called to the polls.
