The Effect of Open Voting on Local Democracy: Town Hall versus Ballot Decisions in Swiss Municipalities

The secret ballot is widely considered a core principle of democracy. Yet, some political processes, such as townhall meetings, entail open voting to make collective decisions. While secret voting is considered to protect voters from external pressure and to thus enable them to express their true preferences, open voting has been praised for allowing for collective debates prior to the decision and for encouraging voters to make responsible decisions. In this paper, we aim at offering an empirical contribution to these political theory debates about how best to implement democratic principles. We do so by comparing the outcomes that result from secret and open votes in Swiss municipalities on the same issue, namely whether the municipality in question should participate in a municipal merger or not – a highly salient and potentially conflictive local issue. Based on the results of 1477 binding local popular vote decisions in Switzerland since 1999, we assess the effect of voting institutions on three outcomes of local referendums: electoral contestation, agreement with elite proposals, and turnout. While most municipalities held a secretive ballot vote, the decision was taken in a town hall meeting through open voting in 452 municipalities. We leverage this difference in decision-making processes in otherwise similar contexts to study their effect on different aspects of local referendum outcomes. We find that town hall decisions on municipal mergers are significantly less contested, that they are more in line with elite positions, and that they are taken by a smaller percentage of the electorate than ballot decisions. These results seem to bolster the normative concerns about open voting. Lower contestation and higher agreement with elite proposals suggest that voters might be subject to social conformity pressures, whereas lower turnout points to potential dissuasive effects of open voting on participation. Based on these results, open voting should probably be avoided as a tool for decision-making – especially when dealing with conflictive and potentially divisive issues such as territorial boundary reforms.