1. Five Years of Internet Voting for
Swiss Expatriates
Krems, May 22, 2014
Micha Germann
Flurin Conradin
Christoph Wellig
Uwe Serdült

2. • Internet voting in Switzerland
• Usage of the new remote voting channel
• Turnout effect
• Conclusions
Structure

3. • Federalism strongly shaped the Swiss i-voting experiments
• Elections are a cantonal, in some cases even a communal matter
• Consequence: implementation was left to the cantons
• Independent set-up of three distinct online voting systems
in three‘pilot’ cantons:
• Geneva (no pre-registration; 2003-2005, 2008-)
• Zurich (no pre-registration; 2005-2011)
• Neuchâtel (pre-registration; 2005-)
The Swiss I-Voting Roll-Out
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4. I-Voting Experiments for Residents
4

5. • Initially exclusive focus on residents, expats were left out
• At least part of the expat community with strong interest in participating
in Swiss elections/referendum votes
• Postal voting with problems:
late dispatch of voting material, problems with postal delivery
• 2008: Neuchâtel becomes the first canton to extend the offer to expats
• The other two pilots follow suit in 2009/10
• Beginning in 2009, other cantons jump in too
• 2014: i-voting for expats in 12 cantons
The Swiss I-Voting Roll-Out II
5

6. I-Voting Experiments for Expats (2008-)
8

7. • The usage rate is an important argument in the political debate
• Assessment based on freshly collected data on usage of the internet voting
channel in federal votes, 2004-2013
• Given the unrivalled high frequency of votes, some interesting patterns
emerge, despite the short time period i-voting has been available
• Some caveats:
• Figures for Neuchâtel’s residential voters include Swiss abroad up to June 2013
• Data for expatriate trials in four cantons is missing completely
(ZH, GR, SH, & SO)
• Some deficits in data quality
(Swiss abroad figures inAG, LU; NE, SG, &TG include expats outside the
Wassenaar context, who have not been eligible to i-vote until recently)
Popularity of Online Voting Channel
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8. Online Voter Share among
Residential Voters (Annualized)
10
Neuchâtel
Zurich
Geneva
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
 Higher share if no pre-registration required
 Novelty effect
 Interruptions are disruptive

9. Online Voter Share among
Expatriate Voters (Annualized)
11
Neuchâtel
Zurich
Geneva
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
Argovia Basel-City Berne Fribourg Geneva
Lucerne Neuchatel St. Gall Thurgau Zurich
Note: solid lines and dots denote Swiss abroad; dashed lines and hollow triangles Swiss residents
 I-voting much more popular among expats
 Except if pre-registration
 No (or at least weaker) novelty effect
 Clear upward trend

10. • The extension to expats has been linked to hopes of boosting turnout
• At least in theory, i-voting lowers the cost associated with voting
(especially for expatriates)
• Voting may not be possible for expatriates w/o i-voting at all
(if voting materials arrive too late)
• Certainty that the vote is counted
• Sciarini et al. 2013 show that hopes have not materialized, at least
not for Geneva’s residential voters
• On the other hand, Lutz (2012) reports a significant bivariate
correlation in an unrepresentative survey of Swiss expats in the
context of the 2011 federal elections
• What if we instead look at a longer time span and actual turnout
levels?
Turnout Effect
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11. • Method: comparing turnout in i-voting and non-ivoting cantons using a
difference-in-difference type of logic
• Main problem: data sparsity
• Only 12/26 cantons collect expat turnout data
• In only 5 of the cantons we have data over a sufficiently long time span
• 2 i-voting cantons began to collect turnout data only after introduction of i-
voting (FR & NE) and 3 immediately before the introduction (SG,TG, &AG)
• 2 non-i-voting cantons began to collect turnout data only recently (VS & UR)
• Still, at least a tentative appraisal is possible
Turnout Effect II
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12. Turnout Effect III
14
0
.1
.2
.3
.4
.5
.6
.7
.8
Turnout
2000
2002
2004
2006
2008
2010
2012
2014
Year
w/o e-voting
with e-voting
Turnout effect (Basel-City vs. Vaud)

13.  small N
 Cantons for which data is available may not be representative
 Tentative finding
Turnout Effect VII
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Table 1: Effect of I-Voting Availability on Turnout in Two-Way Fixed Effects Models
5 Cantons 12 Cantons
I-Voting -.021 [ -.074, 032] .000 [-.04, .041] -.02 [-.05, .001] -.007 [-.034, .021]
Canton FEs X X X X
Vote dummies X X X X
Time Trends X X
Note: OLS coefficients with 95 per cent confidence interval in squared brackets; standard errors are
clustered at the cantonal level.

14. • Given that it has already become their preferred mode of voting, i-
voting for expatriates has been a relative success story
• Preaching to the converted?
• Hopes of turnout boosts may not materialize, but the jury is still out
• There are plans to broaden the roll-out
• I-voting for all expatriates by the 2015 federal elections
• Some non-pilot cantons want to include residents in their experiments
• Despite its relative success, and despite extension plans, online
voting is under fire from multiple angles
Conclusion
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