Swiss reject campaign to make citizenship harder

Official results show that Swiss voters have rejected an initiative aimed at making it harder for foreigners to gain citizenship.

The initiative has failed to win the majority of the cantons (states) with clear “no” votes in most of them.

With the results available today from 20 out of 26 cantons, only one approved the initiative.

A majority of the cantons would have been required in addition to an overall majority of votes.

A projection by the Swiss television network says 64% of the Swiss voted against the campaign.

The initiative launched by the nationalist Swiss People’s Party wanted to overturn a Supreme Court ruling and allow some Swiss communities to subject citizenship applications to a popular vote.