The Federal Act on Political Rights (PRA) gives the cantons responsibility for conducting Swiss federal votes and elections within their territory and sets out the regulatory framework for the associated process.

Trials with electronic voting are governed by Federal Law (Art 8a PRA), the Ordinance on Political Rights (Verordnung über die politischen Rechte; Art. 27a ff VPR), the Federal Chancellery Ordinance on Electronic Voting and other regulations on execution.

In agreement with interested cantons and municipalities, the Federal Council can facilitate electronic voting trials limited in time, geographical scope and subject matter (Art. 8a Para. 1 PRA). The Federal Chancellery assists the cantons in introducing electronic voting and coordinates efforts in this area. Trials require an initial authorization from the Federal Council. This is granted for a duration of up to two years (Art. 27a VPR). Each voting event requires authorization from the Federal Chancellery.

For electronic voting in cantonal and municipal votes and elections, the cantons can determine the conditions independently within the framework of the constitutional principles.

For every contest, the Federal Chancellery checks whether the legal federal requirements for the approval of a system have been satisfied. This inspection is based on the application documentation submitted by the cantons.

To obtain an initial authorization from the Federal Chancellery, the cantons must adopt the following procedure:

The provisions for a second-generation platform are defined in the Federal Chancellery Ordinance on Electronic Voting. Two main requirements must be satisfied:

• Individual verifiability:

  The voters can ensure that their vote has been registered correctly in the electronic ballot box without being changed.

• Universal verifiability:

  When opening the ballot box, the electoral commission can easily check that the ballot box has not been falsified.

These provisions ensure that votes can be verified at three levels:

• Cast-as-intended:

  The voters can verify that they have voted as intended.

• Recorded-as-cast:

  The voters receive confirmation that their vote has been recorded as cast.

• Counted-as-recorded:

  The electoral authorities and independent experts can ensure beyond any doubt that the votes have been counted as they were recorded. This is based on zero-knowledge proofs, i.e. without knowing the votes, without opening the ballot box and without being able to trace the information back to the voters.

Individual and universal verifiability represents significant added value for second-generation solutions compared to previous generations. To facilitate verifiability, the Swiss Post solution is based on unchangeable protocols.