A website that allows would-be voters to find their way through Switzerland`s political maze and match their beliefs with the candidates is booming ahead of Sunday`s general election, the site`s creators said Friday. The "Smartvote" site asks users to answer 36 to 73 questions about their policy choices and their constituency, and comes up with a table of the local party lists or candidates ranked by their suitability. Smartvote said it had recorded more than 800,000 requests by Thursday. More than 3,000 candidates -- a record number -- are standing for the 243 seats in the federal parliament which are up for election. In some major urban regions, like Bern or Zurich, voters can choose among 500 to 800 candidates. In most cases they can either choose set party lists or mix candidates of their choice on the ballot paper. To add to the challenge for the uninitiated, the political complexion of candidates from a same party can vary quite sharply between different regions, especially in the centrist parties. "People don`t change their mind after they`ve consulted Smartvote, but they add candidates, they mix and match from the lists," said Maria Guccione of Smartvote. The multilingual site was first set up at the last federal elections in 2003 by a group of students and has been used for local elections since then. Candidates who return a questionnaire agree to pay a fee -- if they are elected -- helping to finance the venture. Eighty-five percent of the candidates returned the form about their policy choices under a process overseen by political scientists at Swiss universities, Smartvote said. There are just under five million voters in Switzerland, according to an official estimate, about half of whom are expected to cast their ballot this weekend.