I’m visiting Switzerland this week, touring the country with other journalists interested in direct democracy and speaking at a global conference on ballot initiatives and referenda. Here’s a dispatch from the road:
Over a bratwurst lunch Monday in an Alpine mountain pass, Sustenpass, I had an interesting back-and-forth with Bruno Kaufmann, the Swiss-Swedish journalist who is president of the Initiative & Referendum Institute Europe. The subject? Residency and the nature of voting.
Bruno was born Swiss, and remains a citizen. In fact, he’s considered a citizen in two different Swiss municipalities to which he and his family have ties. But Bruno lives with his wife and children in Sweden. He votes in all three places (though he only gets a Swiss federal ballot in one of the two Swiss towns). Shocked? This is perfectly legal, since citizenship here is granted locally, not federally.
I objected, arguing at first that this would be illegal in the U.S. and rightly so. He doesn’t live in or pay taxes in the Swiss towns. He doesn’t have to live daily with the consequences of his votes. But Bruno made several good arguments. Times have changed. People move around more. National identity is fluid–we can have more than one. He feels that he’s properly a citizen of more than one place. And he still has deep ties to these Swiss towns.
As I thought about it, I wondered if Bruno might be onto something.
Americans often grow up one place and move away. Some keep ties to one place even as they live in another. (My wife and I still own a home in northern Virginia even though we live in Los Angeles). What’s wrong with having voting rights in more than one place? Obviously, Americans should only vote in federal elections in one place. But if we’re citizens of more than one state or municipality, why shouldn’t we able to vote in more than one place?
There might even be an opportunity for rural communities that lose ambitious young people. They could grant citizenship and voting rights to people who grew up there, giving them a tie back to the hometown even as they pursue education and careers elsewhere. Perhaps such a tie might bring back more of the young people who leave such places… Perhaps it was the altitude or the jet lag, but I think it’s worth discussing.