baloti.ch - an Internet Voting Platform for Swiss Migrants

The migrant population in Switzerland has but limited options to engage in Swiss political life. Naturalization with full political rights on the national level can only be achieved after a waiting period of twelve years. With the help of an online voting platform we give Swiss migrants the possibility to cast an informal vote for all referendums in the years 2010 and 2011. They can thus train their voting skills. We provide this service in eleven languages and hope to also contribute to the better integration of migrants in Switzerland. Behind the voting platform is also a research project in which we would like to learn about political attitudes and the voting behavior of Swiss migrants. Our main hypothesis is that migrants don''t differ much from their fellow Swiss citizens. The conference paper presents first results based on user data and an online survey.