Students know I have an interest in Switzerland--I am planning to teach my Switzerland class again next spring. I have not yet been able to find anything about it in English, but was just reading an article in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung--the Zurich newspaper, and (incidentally) my own favorite--about a new casualty of the coronavirus pandemic: the Appenzeller Landsgemeinde.
The Swiss canton of Appenzell continues to practice one of the world's oldest forms of direct democracy, the Landsgemeinde, or cantonal assembly. Once a year, the citizens of the canton gather in person, outdoors, in order to vote directly on the canton's most important matters of business. They do this by raising their hands.
The cantonal government has just decided not to hold this year's assembly due to public health concerns. While it would apparently have been possible to devise a system involving measures like social distancing, the government was concerned that vulnerable parts of the population, like the elderly, might be deterred by the health risks from coming to vote.
The picture at the head of this post is of a Landsgemeinde from the late 18th century, giving some sense of this institution's deep historic roots. In fact, for as far back as they have records, some 200 or 300 years, there is apparently no instance of its being canceled. Until now. The voters of Appenzell have never voted in the assembly by casting actual ballots, as opposed to raising their hands. That is pretty remarkable.
Another canton, Glarus--one of the three original members of the Swiss federation--also holds an annual Landsgemeinde and will have to decide soon what to do with its assembly this year. (Like that in Appenzell, it was originally scheduled for earlier and has already been postponed until the fall.) If you are interested, there is a nice video available on YouTube, about 16 minutes, about the assembly in Glarus:
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