The Presidential Election

Update: I wrote this article between the first and second rounds of the French presidential election. As you probably know, François Hollande (photo on right), the Socialist Party candidate, was elected president of the French republic, beating Nicolas Sarkozy 51.63% to 48.37%.

I’m not sure if you have been hearing a lot about them in the States, but France is currently in the middle of their presidential elections. The system works a lot different than ours: there are no primaries, but in order to be an official candidate you have to first collect the signatures of at least five hundred elected representatives from a minimum of 10 different départements (the equivalent of counties in the US, Besançon is located in the départment du Doubs, Dijon is located in the département de Coté d’Or). These could be mayors, general counsels, regional counselors, deputies, senators or members of the European Parliament elected in France. The elections take place in 2 cycles (what they call tours), which are spaced 15 days apart (both are always on Sundays). In the first cycle there is no limit to the number of candidates, but the second round consists of a head-to-head between to the two candidates who received the most votes in round one.

This year there were 10 candidates, but in 2002 there were 16! This can often lead to the kind of situations which can plague the U.S. primaries, where the presence of lots of long-shot candidates who steal votes from more mainstream candidates and result in the “most popular” candidate winning by a relatively small majority. In the case of France 2002, because leftists voted for one of the many socialists candidates, in round two they were left with a choice between Chirac (UMP, equivalent of Republican Party in the US) and LePen (FN, extreme right).

This year the four major candidates were: Nicolas Sarkozy (current president, head of the UMP), François Hollande (PS – socialist party), Marine LePen (daughter of the LePen who ran in 2002, FN) and Jean-Luc Mélenchon (Front de Gauche – far left/communist). The final results were : Hollande 28%, Sarkozy 25%, LePen 19%, and Mélenchon 13%. That means that on Sunday, May 6, the French people will vote for either Hollande or Sarkozy. The participation rate for round one 70%, which is about average for the first round. For the second round, the participation rate is usually closer to 85-87%. To give you an idea of how this compares to the US, in 2008 the participation rate was 63%, which was the highest ever since 1960. The record in the US was in 1964 when nearly 70% of the population voted.

Some interesting facts I learned about voting and the presidency in France:

• There is no such thing as an absentee ballot – you can’t vote in advance or by mail, but you can designate someone else to vote for you (bizarre, right). For example,  my roommates Stéph and Charly left for Montreal on Saturday afternoon and Stéph told me that she designated her sister to vote for her, and she was planning to call said sister on Saturday night to tell her how to vote.
•  The French don’t vote for anything else at the same time as the presidential vote, just the president.
•  The term of the presidency lasts 5 years. It was changed via a constitutional referendum in 2000, during Jacque Chirac’s presidency. Before it was 7 years per term.
• There is no ballot in the sense we’re used to thinking of. This came to my attention because the elections have been a hot topic, I’ve been asking a lot about the process and then I also got to go with Colin when he voted on Sunday. For the set-up, it’s very similar to what we do in the U.S.: each resident votes at the location designated by his or her district. For Colin this location was his old elementary school. Outside the voting location was an official set of ten metal display boards with each candidate’s poster (see the picture above right). I saw similar boards set up outside Ecole Bourgogne in Planoise. Each voter walks into the voting location to find a table with envelopes and little stacks of slips of paper, one stack per candidate. The voter selects which candidates he or she wants to choose from (for example, if you don’t want the other people around to know who you are going to vote for, or if you’re not sure) and then takes one envelope and the slips of paper into the voting booth. They then put one of the slips of paper in the envelope, seal it, and exit the voting booth. The volunteers who are waiting at a table across the room verify the voter’s form of identification (I know Colin took both his national ID card and his driver’s license, but I’m not sure which he used). While I was waiting I read the list of acceptable forms of ID. There must have been at least 10 including the standard passport, national ID card, driver’s license. But there was also “official hunting license with picture,” which I found pretty amusing. Before putting each voter’s envelope in the big clear plastic box, the volunteer read off their legal name and then pronounced “a voté” (as in “Lauren Frisch Dayton… has voted). Although the process of voting is different, the voting location and atmosphere in general felt very similar to when I have voted at home.