BERN. The queues of clipboard carriers outside Swiss railway stations have thinned this autumn, and the figures from the Federal Chancellery explain why. Collecting the 100,000 valid signatures required to force a national vote has never cost more, taken longer or demanded more organisation than it does now.
The right of initiative, anchored in the constitution since 1891, gives any committee 18 months to gather its signatures; an optional referendum requires 50,000 within 100 days. For most of the system's history, party machines and voluntary associations did the work on foot. Today, by the Chancellery's estimate, professional collectors supply roughly 70 per cent of all signatures submitted.
The market rate tells the story. Agencies now charge between CHF 12 and CHF 18 per validated signature, depending on season and subject, against CHF 4 to CHF 6 a decade ago. A fully financed initiative launch costs upwards of CHF 1.5 million before the campaign itself has begun, a threshold that is quietly rewriting who gets to use the constitution's most famous instrument.
Supply has tightened as demand has multiplied. Twelve initiatives are currently pending for verification or still in collection, each competing for the same pool of collectors and the same pitches outside the same stations. Commuters, meanwhile, have become harder to stop: footfall shifted after the pandemic, headphones improved, and the patience of the average passer by is measured in seconds.
The rules of the street have also changed. The federal railways tightened conditions for collection in station concourses, several cantons have restricted paid collection near polling stations, and some communes now require permits that take weeks to process. Collectors describe a slow administrative squeeze; officials describe a necessary defence of public space against commercial occupation.
The political class is divided on whether to mourn or manage the trend. Defenders of direct democracy warn that the initiative is becoming an instrument of the well funded: unions, business federations and wealthy patrons can still buy access to the ballot, while a volunteer committee of citizens cannot. Others note that paid collection was always a business, and that the price rise mainly reflects its professionalisation.
The success statistics give both sides material. Of 25 initiatives launched in the past two years, nine reached the signature threshold, a strike rate below the postwar average. Yet the initiatives that do qualify arrive with larger war chests and more polished campaigns than their volunteer predecessors, and they win at about the same rate.
“The initiative right is becoming a question of budget rather than conviction,” a senior official at the Federal Chancellery said, adding that verification workloads have doubled while staffing has not.
The proposed remedy divides opinion more sharply than the diagnosis. E-collecting, gathering signatures through a secure federal platform, is backed by most parties in principle and blocked in practice by disputes over fraud risk and cantonal data systems. Critics add that a click is cheaper than a conversation, and that the street, for all its costs, is where initiatives are argued before they are signed.
Parliament takes up a cross-party motion on e-collecting in the winter session, and the Chancellery will publish new guidance on signature verification in January. Cantonal pilots, if authorised, could begin in 2028. Nobody involved expects the paper petition to disappear soon, if only because the constitution's thresholds assume it.
The stakes extend beyond procedure. Direct democracy is Switzerland's most recognised export and its most cited domestic virtue, and a visible monetisation of its entry ticket troubles even those who profit from it. Polling shows public attachment to the initiative right remains overwhelming; attachment to the industry that has grown around it is another matter.
The paper petition has survived two world wars, the arrival of television and the internet. Whether it survives the attention economy is the next test, and the answer will be decided less in Bern than on the pavements outside the country's stations. This autumn's thinner queues suggest the test has already begun.