Last Sunday, Chris and I voted as Swiss Citizens for the first time. There had been one other earlier opportunity, but we kind of missed it. We had gotten everything in the mail, and even filled it partially out. But when we went to drop it off, we finally read the fine print. You only have until 10 a.m. to drop off your vote! Of course, you are also allowed to drop it off the night before, but we thought you had all day like in the States. Not so. The Swiss are nothing if not efficient and want to get that vote taken, counted, and reported before the day's end. So, due entirely to our own fault, we missed the first round of voting.
This time I dropped off the ballots while the kids were still getting ready for church. That way we knew we would make the cutoff time. There were several issues to be voted on, only a few of which I understood on my own. Chris had to explain them to me in "human" language. I had read all the information they send with the ballots and thought I understood what some of them were about, but apparently, all that legalese totally confused me. In short, I almost voted to legalize marijuana. Doh!
I thought it was very interesting that both pro and con information was provided in the voting packets. Even the laws that were proposed by the government had a little blurb containing the opinion of those officials who were against the proposed law. All in all, I got the feeling they were trying to be very fair, and wanted all sides to have their say. Some of the things we were against were passed, others not, but overall I was very happy to finally feel like I was part of the democratic process again. No more "taxation without representation" for us!