I’m sort of excited about the elections tomorrow in a doom-and-gloom sort way but it is still all very fascinating to me. As a non-EU citizen, I’m not allowed to vote tomorrow for the first round of the French presidential elections. Instead, I’m just going to have to live vicariously through my French other half. I don’t know who he is going to vote for; that’s because he doesn’t know yet either. To him, they’re all scary. I would have to agree.
Just about 4 days ago, he received his voting materials (pictured above): flyers from all of the candidates and small pieces of very thin paper with each candidate’s name. Also, not long ago, he received his Carte Electorale (election card), which you must have in your possession when voting (also pictured) along with ID. On the reverse side, this card has your name, address and the official stamp from your local mayor.
Me: Ok, so how does it work?
Him: You can take the one piece of paper with the candidate’s name of your choice to the polls. Once there, you will receive an envelope so you can go into the booth and put that piece of paper inside then put it in the official urne (voting box). That’s it.
Me: What if you forget your piece of paper (like I’d do)?
Him: Once you enter the polling place, there are stacks of those papers representing all of the candidates.
Me: You mean the stacks are just at the entrance? So, people can see which person you’re voting for when you pick up the name?
Him: Well, most people pick one of each then take that into the booth. They just leave all but one behind in the booth. After a while, the booth is a big mess with papers scattered everywhere! Well, at least in a big city. It’s probably not going to be that messy in a tiny village like ours.
Me: That is still a huge waste.
Him: You can also have your candidate’s paper in your pocket, but pick up another candidate’s paper at the polling place.
Me: Why?
Him: Just to mess with people trying to see who you’re voting for. Like maybe I’ll pick up Le Pen, but vote for Bové. Or someone else. I don’t know.
Me: You’re silly.
Him: Oh! Once you drop your vote in the box, someone announces out loud, “A Voté!” (Voted!) Then someone else checks off your name from a register, so you don’t vote twice.
Me: That sounds like they did that in the middle ages. Maybe someone will have a big cane and pound it on the ground…
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I’ve been reading you blog for ages, and I must say it is always very interesting. I just had a little remark concerning the french voting system. All voters are required to take one of each pieces of paper when entering the polling place; this is to avoid influencing other peoples’ votes. In short, it is illegal to take only one piece of paper…
Comment by littleFrenchInAmerica 04.21.07 @ 9:44 amNormally, you can’t take just one piece of paper on the table, you have to take ALL of them, so that nobody knows who you will vote for, that’s the rule.
I’m also excited by the election (and quite fed up with all the verbal violence that we saw these last months). Here in Washington, we’re voting today, that’s great !
Comment by Sandrine 04.21.07 @ 9:46 amthanks. i didn’t know that! and obviously, my sweetie didn’t know it either. i’ll have to tell him about french law 
Yeah. T’will be my first time!^^I’m all excited, I’ve read half of the flyers (even if I know who I’m going to vote for). Now, we have to wait ’till tomorrow evening…
Comment by Ewj 04.21.07 @ 12:44 pmi’m dying to know already. it would be so funny if people completely unexpected to make the 2nd round actually do make it. like besancenot and laguiller! haha.
Comment by ptinfrance 04.22.07 @ 10:08 amHi There
Well, personnaly i don t take one of each, i just don’t care.
Also as per the electronic voting machines as i know it s causing a lot of issues, Diebold, the compagny making most of the voting machines in the US, is also producing ATMs, and as i know their ATMs dont have any security issue, but the voting machines do. It takes something like one minute to an aged personne with no special tools to replace the memory card holding the result without hurting the “scellé”. Some other ones are wifi enabled for no reasons and have a remote controll app installed on them, if the app has a security issue (i think it was PCanywhere). Even more scarry, you dont even need to hack all the machines, results are concentrated in one before being sent to a more central one, etc… if you would happen to infect the good one with an app which would change the result, then you could change the results for a bunch of offices at the same time.
As per the Diebold machines, i see no reason they could do secure atm and not secure voting machines, banking stuff is a hell more complicated and yet they can’t do the simple stuff, well only reason i see is that peoples votes are not _that_ important so that you’d want to invest in ways to make them securely, yet i think i’d be paranoiac to think that was made on purpose so that results could be hacked later if not pleasing some peoples so i’ll just reject this.
Hence i think it s not yet too retarded to use paper unless we found some good working secure way of doing this electronically.
(lot of articles on this are on the net, personnally i did read the ones linked from slashdot)
Comment by pascal 04.22.07 @ 11:24 amLeave a comment
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