Voting Procedures
Voting can be done through hand counts, mail-in ballots, visits to polling booths, or, more recently, Internet votes.
Until several years ago, some cantons punished citizens for not voting (with a fine equivalent to $3). In the canton of Schaffhausen, voting is still compulsory. This is the reason for the turnout there being usually a little higher than in the rest of the country.
There are no voting machines in Switzerland; all votes are counted by hand. Every municipality randomly recruits a number of citizens who have the duty of counting the ballots, but penalties for disobeying this duty have become rare. However, after people sort the ballots (e.g. "yes" and "no"), then the total number of "yes" and "no" votes are counted either manually or, in bigger cities, by an automatic counter (like the ones used in banks to count banknotes); or the ballots are weighed by a precision balance. Vote counting is usually accomplished within five or six hours, but votes for parliamentary elections from the citizens of large cities (Zurich or Geneva for example) may take much longer.
Read more about this topic: Voting In Switzerland
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