In an interview published on 24 September 2026, FDP National Councillor Damien Cottier urged Parliament to prioritise a secure, uniform e-voting system for the 800 000 Swiss citizens living outside the country – the so-called “Fifth Switzerland”. Speaking to SWI swissinfo.ch, Cottier said postal delays still prevent tens of thousands from voting in time for referendums and federal elections. Switzerland suspended nationwide e-voting pilots in 2019 after security flaws were uncovered in the Swiss Post platform. Since then only the cantons of St Gallen and Neuchâtel have relaunched limited tests. Cottier argues that maintaining multiple cantonal solutions is inefficient and that a single federal platform, restricted at first to expatriates, would rebuild trust while keeping costs under control. The MP tied the issue to the wider Bilateral Agreements III package with the EU, noting that free movement rules directly affect Swiss living in member states. Failure to modernise voting channels, he warned, risks disenfranchising a constituency that serves as “ambassadors” for Switzerland’s open-economy model. Technical experts say the Federal Chancellery’s new Remote-Voting Task-force is on track to publish minimum security standards by mid-2027. A consortium led by ETH Zurich and Swiss Post is prototyping a verifiable system using cryptographic voter receipts and open-source code – key demands from the hacker community. For globally mobile staff with Swiss passports the announcement is significant: if a federal pilot is approved in 2028, eligible voters would be able to cast ballots online from any assignment location without arranging courier returns. Employers should update relocation handbooks to reflect the prospective change.
Source: SWI swissinfo.ch
