>People who can't go to the polls for various reasons can authorize someone else to vote for them.
>To do so, a voter must fill out a form ahead of time and bring it to a police station. A person can be the proxy of no more than one voter living in France — and potentially one additional person living abroad.
>Up to 7% of people voted by proxy in the last presidential election five years ago.
It's not that France isn't accounting for the people who can't make it to the polls on Election Day. It's just that they're doing it differently.
In France, if you can vote, you can even count, and people can volunteer when they cast their ballot. The president of the voting station will usually also ask young voters to help.
Voter suppression is not nearly comparable in France and in the US. The system used in France would thus likely not work.
For instance imagine that the voting enrollment office is 30km from your work/home and that it is only open during work hours. It is likely that poor people/people without a car/etc would not enroll.
> normal circumstances main-in is for deployed troops and citizens living overseas, who normally are a small minority.
There are lots of other valid reasons to vote by mail. In fact, living abroad is only a valid reason in a minority of states. Depending on what state you last lived in before moving abroad, you may not be able to legally vote at all.
All states let you vote by mail if you are going to be traveling out of your polling district for the entirety time the polls are open on Election Day, or are sick and cannot go in-person. But some states let you vote by mail without a specific reason, and a few states run all elections by mail.
I think anyone living in France (or anywhere else) legally should be allowed to vote in local elections. So I think the laws should be changed to allow this Brit to vote in these elections.
Of course that's a bit beside the point in the case though. I guess that option is only open to EU citizens. I find that odd, but I guess that's the law.
>US does not do either, and any attempt to add security either during registration or on voting day is attributed to racism or classism or some other bigotry
The US already has a registration system. The information just need to be current and the system designed in such a way where a registered person can only vote once (which is not what campaigners are against).
Over here, the local council sends you a letter regularly for you to update your details in the electoral register. If you don't respond then you are not registered to vote in upcoming elections.
They send you a poll card which tell you where to go vote. If you don't have your poll card you can still vote by turning up at the correct polling station. You can't vote at another station.
You have to provide your name and address and they will look you up on the electoral register. If the staff suspect you are fraudulent, they will call the police. After you are provided with a ballot, they cross you name out from the list so that it can't be reused.
There are a small number of cases of error or fraud is very low as you need a lot of information on a large scale over a large area across many polling stations to do meaningful election fraud undetected.
The voting offices are supposed to be adapted to the amount of French citizens in the area. Here in Belgium there are 12 of them for example.
It's possible that the consulate of Montreal misjudged the amount of voters (the turnout in 2017 was higher than expected for the citizens living abroad, if I recall correctly) but more generally, citizens are expected to make the effort necessary to cast their vote.
Yes and, it's generally much easier to vote in France. Better transportation, easy to take time off work, etc.
Throughout the USA, in many jurisdictions, voting is onerous for far too many people. Too few poll sites, not enough gear, hard to take time off work, hard to make trip, etc. So progressives have been pushing early voting, as already allowed for overseas, military, and disabled voters, to mitigate these failings.
The French strategy is better overall. But the USA isn't committed to such practicalities.
> I don't know the rules in the USA, but in the UK it is generally forbidden to stream yourself voting or take a photo in the polling station. Maintaining the secrecy of ballots is high priority.
Except we allow postal voting pretty much willy nilly, especailly in areas where intimidation can happen
Explain how this removes anyone's right to vote. In pretty much every country, there was always a way to vote: by post, while wearing a mask at the polling station, and presumably online where supported.
> Voting must be done in a publicly visible manner (and yet, the ballot should remain secret) so that there is provably no coercion.
There can certainly be coercion even in countries that maintain secret ballots. In Russian regions, it is not unheard of for civil servants and teachers to be told by their superiors that they must vote the favoured party “or else”, and a mobile phone picture of their ballot might be demanded as proof that they did so.
I’m not entirely convinced it’s fair for non residents to vote, especially those that have no intentions of coming back.
Election results for French expats are typically very different from those back home. LePen was not even close to be qualified for a second turn in the last presidential elections in London. Unless you live in France you would typically not be subject to any of the laws the new government would enact, so part of me thinks “why should I have a say in this?”
On the other hand, LePen proposed to strip French expats of their citizenship if they hold other nationalities, so I suppose having a say in the matter was only fair.
Isn’t it absurd that as someone who lives somewhere and pay their taxes you can’t have a say on local politics, just because you don’t have a piece of paper that says you have the right nationality? As a French I can live 10 years outside of the country and still vote for the mayor of Paris. You don’t even need to live in Europe to vote for European elections if you have that paper that says you’re “French”.
>To do so, a voter must fill out a form ahead of time and bring it to a police station. A person can be the proxy of no more than one voter living in France — and potentially one additional person living abroad.
>Up to 7% of people voted by proxy in the last presidential election five years ago.
It's not that France isn't accounting for the people who can't make it to the polls on Election Day. It's just that they're doing it differently.
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