Hello everyone,

I'm from Switzerland. As you may know, we are the only country in the world with direct democracy on all levels of government (municipal, Cantonal and federal). This means there's always a lot of stuff to vote on. We've got 4 ballots per year, with each of them consisting of 4-6 independent political issues. These may range anywhere from something as mundane as building a new Elementary School in your neighborhood to something as significant as changing/adapting the constitution.

I'm a bit of a politics nerd and so I love to be politically active. I consider my right to vote very important. Unfortunately, as my vision has continued to decrease over the past years, exercising this right has becoming increasingly difficult. In Switzerland we don't have any voting machines or electronic voting, both because we tend to lag a bit behind the times and because it's not really safe. Instead it's all done with paper ballots. Every citizen receives them by mail and you can either mail them back or get up early on voting Sunday and take a stroll to the ballot box.

Now, since my vision has become so bad, I can't read print anymore. I also lost my ability to write by hand roughly 3 years ago. This is of course a problem because... how the heck am I going to fill out the voting slips??

My solution so far has been for me to ask my wife to fill out the voting slips for me. We'd sit down together and she'd read me every proposal/question. Then I tell her whether I want to vote "yes" or "no" and she writes down the answer for me.

This "solution" is of course problematic for a whole range of reasons. First of all, it's illegal for someone else to fill out my ballot. Secondly, one thing that always comes in the voting envelop along with the actual voting slips is a type of agreement I need to sign. By doing so, I confirm that these are the answers I really want etc. and I also confirm that I filled out the ballot myself (so there was no voter fraud). By signing this agreement, I obviously commit an illegal act because I lie about how my answers came on the paper. And thirdly, my wife doesn't possess the Swiss citizenship, meaning she doesn't have the right to vote in this country even for herself. This makes the whole thing extra illegal.

It's not just about committing crimes though. Another issue that bothers me about this solution is that I effectively lose my constitutional right to a secret vote. My wife knows literally every answer to every issue I vote on. Now, generally speaking that's not a problem because we agree on almost everything but it still feels a bit uncomfortable at times. There have been two or three occasions where I wished I could have filled out the ballot on my own because the issues were a bit... sensitive.

So, now that I have bored you with a very long text, I'd like to know how you ladies and gents solve this problem. Regardless of the country you reside in. Assuming you can't read print anymore like me and maybe you also can't properly see the screen of the voting machines... how do you vote?