I came across a project being set up by a number of long-term residents of Switzerland from EU countries who support expanding suffrage to long-time residents in national elections. I will not go further in depth -- there was an article in the NZZ am Sonntag about it -- as I am not posting this to cause a debate concerning suffrage.

I thought I should share the address to anyone who is interested in participating. You are required to provide information about yourself, including your permit number. The organizers of the project have already contacted migration offices in a number of cantons, including Zürich, which have promised to cooperate with the organizers in order to ensure that all those involved have been truth about their residency and ensure that the "electorate" of sorts is controlled, i.e. legitimate. A number of Swiss political scientists have also signed onto the project and plan to study its results. It seems that the views of non-citizens has not been greatly studied up to this point -- so they are excited about the potential data they could mine.

If you're at all interested in casting a vote, head over to http://www.auslaenderstimmrecht.ch/ for more information. The website is only available in French and German. If anyone is curious, I am not at all connected to the website.

On a side note: the site smartvote is a good resource for those interested in learning more about Swiss politics. At the website you complete a survey, which politicians from most major parties and party lists have also completed, and are provided with charts displaying your own political views on top of that of the parties and candidates. It has been available in English for a little over a month now. I ran a search and it turns up here on the forum somewhere in the thread concerning the Create Security initiative, albeit buried somewhere in the discussion there. Since it is rather hidden, I thought it might be worth giving it another bump of sorts. The NZZ and other newspapers have been using this website fairly often during the electoral campaign to chart where the parties and their candidates stand "ideologically."

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I liked the idea, however the amount of private information they wanted I totally dislike. As far as I could gather from the German in the disclaimer, this disclaimer did not ease my fears of what they could do with this info in the future.

So I cancelled the signup in the end. Shame as the initiative itself is good.