News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Switzerland votes against electronic ID system provided b... by vinay427 on Monday March 08, 2021 @12:31PM (#26388610)
> Firstly "accepting a law" implies - in western liberal democracies - a legislative process in which a law is proposed and accepted by some kind of parliament. This is not what happened here - in Switzerland, laws can be given to the population directly by non-parliamentary, non-governmental organisations in referenda, which then become binding.

This is more of a tangent, but I would contest the idea that "accepting a law" implies that it is passed by a parliamentary body. This was maybe true in the 1800s, but not today when plenty of western liberal democracies have some form of direct democracy with electoral referendums on important issues. Some (e.g. California) have a system roughly comparable to Switzerland, although it's obviously at the state level in the case of CA.

There are no comments on this comment yet.