Canton acts to create greater clarity

During the elections held for members of the cantonal government last year, as many as 2,897 ballot papers were deemed void, meaning an average of 9.4% across the canton. In order to ensure this high level does not recur, the government has made a number of amendments.
 
To be more precise, of the 30,817 ballot papers cast, 27,743 were valid, 2,897 void and 177 totally blank. It was discovered that a large number of votes was declared void because people inadvertently used a similar-looking explanatory sheet to vote with instead of the real ballot paper.
 
After careful consideration, the Administrative Court ruled that these papers were to count as if genuine ballot papers had been used, though their inclusion in the ballot did not actually lead to any change in the make-up of the cantonal government. However, it did give rise to much tension at the time.
 
As a result of this confusion, it was decided to make the difference between these two papers much clearer. In fact in two instances where a second round of voting was called for in November, namely in Steinhausen and Walchwil, these were used, and successfully, too, as out of the 2,736 votes cast in the case of the former, only eight were void, and of the 1,171 votes cast in Walchwil only three were void.  
 
On a separate but related issue, there were five instances of discrepancies between what candidates wrote on the proposal forms and what actually appeared on the subsequently printed list. These included, for example, the wrong year of birth of the candidate in question, an incorrectly spelt name and incorrect information as to whether the candidate was standing for the first time or again, mistakes about which the public was only alerted to by the press.
 
In order to prevent errors like this happening again, the State Chancellery, the cantonal authority charged with conducting elections, has suggested to the parties that details of candidates should be submitted electronically in order to avoid mistakes caused through unclear handwriting, for example. It further advised parties meticulously to check entries published in the Official Gazette well in advance of the elections to ensure any mistakes were corrected in good time. While there clearly were mistakes, the State Chancellery had not been informed of any.