On September 3, Tamedia newspapers revealed suspicions of massive fraud during the collection of signatures for popular initiatives. How is this possible? Analysis with Michael Maccabez, RTS parliamentary correspondent in Bern.
“You have to know that we are facing several scandals. The first case dates back to 2019, it is that of dishonest canvassing: people in the street who ask you to sign a text for XYZ and, in fact, it is rather the opposite, they present the arguments dishonestly”, explains Michael Maccabez.
Recently, two other cases have made headlines: first, the case of fraudulent signatures, i.e. people’s signatures are forged to thicken the packet of papers that are then handed over to the Federal Chancellery. Then, the case of signatures collected without a mandate and then resold.
A clue that may seem silly but is quite obvious is the state of the sheets that arrive at the Federal Chancellery. The legitimate sheets are all crumpled because they have been on markets, where hundreds of people have taken them.
In Switzerland, it is the municipalities that are responsible for verifying signatures. However, they have no means of authenticating them since there is no register of handwritten signatures. The Federal Chancellery ensures that the signatures come from all cantons and that there are enough of them.
So there are simple ways to cheat, such as keeping information from a previous signature collection to use in a future initiative and scribbling down the signature in question, or going into a building and copying all the names of the people who live there, and adding the date of birth and the signature.
Why does this fraud particularly concern French-speaking Switzerland? Did we vote on texts which in reality did not come to fruition?
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