Who can vote in the EU referendum?

Elodie Fabre, Queen’s University Belfast

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

With turnout expected to be high, who gets to vote in the EU referendum is an important matter. But who exactly gets to take part? The simple answer is: if you are eligible to vote in Westminster elections, you are eligible to vote in the EU referendum on June 23. Here’s a recap of who is in, and who is out – when it comes to voting, that is.

British citizens over the age of 18

They will be able to vote, unless they have lived outside of the country for more than 15 years.

In spite of a campaign to extend the franchise to 16 and 17-year-olds, the British parliament voted to retain the existing franchise for parliamentary elections. That means that some young people who were able to vote on the independence of Scotland will not be able to decide whether their country remains a part of the EU.

How old are you now?
PA/Andrew Milligan

Others affected by the decision not to change the franchise are British people who have lived abroad for more 15 years. Many will have been hoping that the government would implement its manifesto commitment to introduce votes for life but that has not materialised in the year since the election.

Nor has any effort been made to encourage British people living abroad to register to vote (which was also in the Conservative election manifesto) or to make it easier to vote from abroad – which is notoriously difficult.

EU citizens

Unless they are from Cyprus, Ireland or Malta (see below), EU citizens will not be able to vote.

This issue had become quite politicised. EU citizens can vote in the UK in local, devolved and EU elections and were able to vote in the referendum on Scottish independence. Because the outcome of the EU referendum is likely to affect them directly, some felt that they should be able to vote in it. Others argued that this referendum was an opportunity for the British people to have their say on this issue. The latter view prevailed, and most EU citizens won’t have a vote on June 23.

Citizens of Ireland and Commonwealth countries

It may sound paradoxical since EU citizens can’t vote, but citizens of the Republic of Ireland and qualifying Commonwealth citizens can.

The means Commonwealth citizens who live in the UK (and have leave to remain in the UK or who don’t need it) are included, as are Irish citizens living in the UK. Irish citizens can vote if they are living overseas but have been registered to vote in Northern Ireland in the past 15 years.

This has been a controversial, decision, not least because it means that citizens of three European countries will actually be able to vote after all. As well as people in Ireland, citizens of Malta and Cyprus will qualify, as these two countries are both members of the EU and the Commonwealth.

Malta is in.
Berit Watkin, CC BY

Citizens from British crown dependencies, such as Jersey, and British Overseas Territories, such as the British Virgin Islands, are also eligible.

Does it matter?

How this franchise is likely to influence the result is hard to tell. However, by bowing to the pressure to keep EU citizens out of the vote, David Cameron has lost a group of voters who are probably largely in favour of EU membership.

It is hard to assess the impact non-British voters will have on the referendum, since they come from such different countries as Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan and Ghana. There are over one million foreign voters, but their turnout rate is unknown, and there is some evidence that they tend to register less than the rest of the population.

Irish voters are probably more in favour of remaining in the EU, as Brexit could affect their rights as well as their country’s economy. Taoiseach Enda Kenny even urged Irish voters in the UK to vote to remain.

Some Commonwealth voters, on the other hand, may be receptive to the argument that leaving the EU would allow the UK to strengthen its ties with the Commonwealth and facilitate Commonwealth migration to the UK. Former Australian PM John Howard recently called for the UK to leave the EU, but the Australian government’s position is to remain.

So all told, it looks like Commonwealth voters may be receiving mixed messages, just like the rest of the electorate.

Elodie Fabre, Lecturer in Politics and International Studies, Queen’s University Belfast

French regional elections December 2015

I just wrote a short analysis of the French regional elections that took place on the 6th and 13th December for the blog of the Political Studies Association here.  The Front National (FN) failed to win a majority of he seats in a single regional council in spite of having come first in 6 regions in the first round. The main opposition centre-right party Les Républicains (LR) and its allies won 7 regions, the Socialist Party (PS) and its allies won 5 regions, and nationalists won in Corsica for the first time, although they are two seats short of a majority.

My main points are:

• French regional elections continue to be second-order election, a situation made even more pronounced by the 13 November terror attacks in Paris
• Turnout was low in the first round (50%) but rose by 8 points in the second round. The only precedent for such an increase was in 2002 when Jean-Marie Le Pen qualified for the second round of the presidential election. However, not all these extra votes were anti-FN votes. In all but 2 regions, the FN saw its number of votes increase in the second round (although the party’s share of the vote decreased in all regions).
• The Socialist Party didn’t do too badly. It was expected to lose regions. It had won 20 out of 22 in 2004 and 21 out of 22 in 2010 (the number of metropolitan regions was reduced to 13 in 2015) when it was in the opposition. As a governing party with a very unpopular President, the PS was bound to lose a number of regions. It retained four, but lost the regions with the country’s main cities: Ile-de-France (Paris), Auvergne-Rhône Alpes (Lyon) and Provence Alpes Côte-D’azur (Paca) (Marseille) and retained its Western strongholds. However, the party arrived third in 7 regions in the first round. If these results were to be repeated in the 2017 presidential elections Hollande would not reach the second round.
• Under these circumstances, Les Républicains will be happy to regain some of the regions they lost in 2004 but dissatisfied with the overall results. They should have done better, and the strategy to look for voters on the right of the party is already been questioned. This will be one of the central issues of the primary that will be the focus of the party’s attention in the coming year.

British expats feel neglected, but will it show at the ballot box?

This post was first published in The Conversation

Elodie Fabre, Queen’s University Belfast

In elections that are too close to call, every vote counts. With a likely low margin between the two main parties in the UK election, the vote of British expats may suddenly become more important than before. Indeed, David Cameron declared at the end of 2014 that the expat vote “could hold the key to the election”.

And yet, you’d have to be listening very hard to spot a single reference to expat voters in this election campaign.

It’s not hard to figure out why. Historically, British citizens living abroad have always had very low rates of registration and participation, and they still do; Sam Gyimah, minister for the constitution, has claimed in parliament that overseas electors are some of the least represented on the electoral register.

As a result, politicians have generally been able to comfortably ignore expats altogether. Only recently have they starting to pay more attention – and it’s still not much.

Gone too long

British overseas nationals have only be able to vote since 1985, and many still think they forfeit their voting rights once they leave the country. Others feel that because they live outside the UK, they should not vote in British elections. Some prefer to get involved in elections in their country of residence.

Still, data from the Electoral Commission indicated that more 90,000 expats were registered to vote by 2015. That’s a significant improvement on past numbers – though it’s still only a very small proportion of the millions of expats who are eligible.

To be able to register to vote, expats must have been previously registered to vote in a constituency and must not have lived abroad for longer than 15 years. Unlike France, where citizens living abroad never lose their right to vote in their country’s national elections, British expats lose their right to vote after 15 years of living abroad.

What all this means is not easy to say. Trying to summarise what 5.5m people know about politics is a very tricky task, made worse by the fact that we ourselves know little about them in general. But from what we do know, it looks like many British expats have few expectations of politicians and the outcome of the election – demonstrating that they may not be so different from many UK-based British citizens after all.

But then again, a look at the many expat online forums and newspapers imply that there’s considerable support for the right to vote for life.

And some expats have taken matters into their own hands.

Neglected

James Franklyn Jackson, a retired civil servant living in France, is standing for election in Uxbridge and South Ruislip to highlight the fact that although he cannot vote in the election he is allowed to stand as an MP. He was also able to compare the situation of British expat to that of French expats, who have votes for life, dedicated deputies (MPs) in 11 overseas constituencies since 2012, 12 senators, and even their own government minister.

Home and away.
fasphotographic via Shutterstock

A significant number of British expats are pensioners, and many are unhappy with recent British policies of pension freeze and the removal of the winter fuel allowance from those living in warmer climates.

That policy also infuriates older British expats living across the channel, since the definition of “warmer countries” includes France – which has significant mountain regions and areas that are at the same latitude as the south of England.

Overall, many expats feel neglected. Take the issue of a potential Brexit, for instance. The 2m British citizens living in another EU member state would be significantly affected if the UK left the EU. They could suddenly have to apply for visas, residence permits and drivers’ licences, and might face major new restrictions on their social security and pension rights.

Yet this aspect of the issue is hardly ever discussed (former attorney general Dominic Grieve’s warning that the Britons scattered around the EU would become illegal immigrants being a rare exception).

So with British politicians apparently not concerned about them, British expats may understandably feel that they have little to gain from getting involved and casting a ballot in this election.

Elodie Fabre is Lecturer in Politics and International Studies at Queen’s University Belfast.

This article was originally published on The Conversation.
Read the original article.

Candidates and electoral propaganda (2)

Belated second part of my post on the candidates in the 3rd overseas constituency, with the remaining 8 candidates and their official propaganda.

11. Ezella Sahraoui, Parti Radical de Gauche, soutenue par Génération Ecologie, no slogan (how disappointing). The PRG is a centre-left party. Its leader, Jean-Michel Baylet, participated in the socialist primary in 2011. Lives in Lille.

A lot of text on this leaflet. For the third constitutency, the PRG has chosen a young (24) female candidate and an old (75) male substitute. P.1 introduces the canddidate and her political engagement. P.2 develop four themes: education for French children abroad, ‘Francophonie’ (promotion and defence of the French language and culture), economic development (support to French entrepreneurs abroad), and social issues (in favour of a ‘European social insurance card’ on the model of the European health card, which would also cover pension and unemployment).

12. Jérôme de Lavenère Lussan, independent (but former UMP, slogan: ‘Votre candidat, votre choix’. Lives in London. Obviously, winner of the poshest name competition.

A hedge fund manager, Lussan‘s programme is presented on p.2, with proposals on education (French-language education should be more accessible to more people). He rejects ‘American-style taxation’ of expats and wants to promote the values of Northern Europe, including entrepreneurship, mobility and openness. He’s also an alumnus of Edinburgh Uni (hurrah!)

13. Yannick Naud, MoDem (Mouvement Démocrate). Lives in London.

Like Lussan’s leaflet, the first page of this leaflet is text-free, with only a picture of the candidate. You will notice that Naud holds a document with a picture of François Bayrou on the cover. Yes, the MoDem is another party that came out of the UDF. Bayrou was the last leader of the UDF, rejected the merger of the centre-right with Chirac’s RPR, and was candidate to the presidential election in 2002, 2007 and 2012. He has been an education minister during Miterrand’s second and last cohabitation cabinet (1993-97). After the first round of the 2012 presidential election, Bayrou said he would vote for François Hollande, the socialist candidate, breaking the traditional support of the UDF and MoDem for the main right-wing candidate.

His priorities include: French-language education, fair taxation, entrepreneurship, support to exports, promoting professional competences, promoting France abroad, healthcare, social protection and pension rights. He also defends the European project, which is a traditional commitment of the centre-right.

14. Marie-Claire Sparrow, independent. Lives in London.

Unlike the last two leaflets, this one is all about the message, with lots of texts over two pages. A solicitor, Sparrow has been a member of the AFE since 2006, and her programme is very expat-centred, with a project that proposes to defend the social rights of expats in their country of residence and in France and double nationality, to put an end to ‘fiscal discrimination against expats’ (they are not allowed to keep a number of savings accounts while living abroad, for instance), to increase the presence of French schools across the constituency, to support the network of Alliance françaises.

15. Bertrand Larmoyer, independent. Lives in London.

One of the few single-sided documents. An independent, Larmoyer introduces himself a liberal, but defends responsible, ethical liberalism. His programme is divided into 2 parts, one on expat issues and one on national issues. For expats, he wants to improve access to French schools, continue the improvement on consular services, prevent the taxation of expats, improve the exercise of pension rights acquired abroad when expats return to France, and to introduce the representation on expats in the management of the French social security system for expats.

On national issues, Larmoyer wants to encourage entrepreneurship, reduce the size of the state to reduce deficits, reform the state to decrease the number of levels of government, and reform social services.

16. Emmanuelle Savarit, UMP. Again, no slogan. Lives in London.

A surprisingly simple (and single-sided) document from the candidate of the main right-wing party. An entrepreneur, she really started politics to support Sarkozy’s campaign in 2007 (when she then lived in the US). Also surprisingly, her programme only addresses expat issues. One might expect the candidate of the party that is still the majority in Parliament to highlight her party’s national programme.

As a result, her programme includes, like most of the candidates, proposals to improve access to French schools and encourage bilingual education, fight against expat taxation, improve administrative services for expats, encourage cultural exchanges and entrepreneurship. She also wants to improve access to social services and pension rights.

17. Olivier Bertin, Europe-Ecologie-Les Verts. Slogan: ‘Vivre mieux’ (better living). Lives in London (his substitute lives in Oslo).

A delegate of the AFE  since 2001, Bertin is the candidate of the Green party, whose candidate for the presidency was born in this constituency (Norway). His priorities for expats are close to that of the other candidates: improving access to French schools, strengthening the cultural network, improving social services for expats, refusing double nationality, improving consular services, etc. He also presents his party’s national progrmme: ‘saving the climate and preserving nature’, creating jobs through a green economy and reforming taxation for high earners and polluting industries, improving standards of living through better social housing and public health, and reforming institutions (‘a sixth republic in a federal Europee and an interdependent world’).

18. Edith Tixier, Solidarité et Progrès. Slogan: ‘Un monde sans la City ni Wall Street’ (a world without the City and Wall Street). No inication as to where she might live.

This candidate obviously wins the prize for best glasses. She is a candidate for Jacques Cheminade‘s party. Cheminade was candidate in the 1995 and 2012 presidential elections. He will be remembered for his proposal to colonise the moon in the 2012 election campaign.

The leaflet is about reforming the finance world, and it is simpler to reproduce p.2 than explain it.

The leaflet looks very professional, and the party proposes to launch a parliamentary commission on the causes of the economic crisis, split the banks to separate speculative activities from more ordinary banking activities, and increase the amount of money available. Tixier’s campaign emails look a lot less polished (one referred to the fact that we expats might miss France and its food (‘J’espère que vous n’êtes pas trop nostalgique de notre pays et de sa culture rabelaisienne : fromage, bon vin, saucisson et pain frais’). So, no cliche about France was used in the making of this campaign material, then.

Le Petit Journal (news website for the expat community) has a comparison of the programmes of all the candidates here.

Candidates and electoral propaganda (1)

Yesterday I received the traditional pre-election mail that includes the propaganda from all the candidates in my constituency. With 20 candidates, this makes for a lot of dead trees. In fact, I received leaflets for 17 candidates, most of them also adding their ballot paper.

All 17 leaflets on my kitchen table

Of course, this arrived only 24 hours before the closure of internet voting, and I had already voted. I still found them very interesting, both because they represent a very wide spectrum of opinions and because they have different styles. I will present these leaflets here in no particular order (probably in fact the order in which I found them folded in the envelope). Because there are so many, the introduction to those who want to be my MP will take place in several instalments.

1. Denys Dhiver, Parti chrétien démocrate et France Ecologie. Slogan: ‘La droite de convictions’ (a Right with convictions?). This is a party founded Christine Boutin,  a traditional Catholic politician, former Housing minister of Sarkozy and candidate in the 2002 presidential election. Lives in England (nothing more specific).

What are these convictions?, you might wonder. The first one is defending family (that is, a man and a woman) and life (‘from conception’, meaning that he’s against abortion), restoring authority in schools, defending agriculture and SMEs, fighting against rural population exodus, changing the tax regime by including creating a universal basic income and taxing all revenues,  creating a compulsory national service to teach young people community service and respect for authority (in case school failed, I guess), changing the presidential term to a non-renewable 7-year term and decreasing the number of MPs from 577 to 500 (with 100 elected through PR), getting rid of jus soli as a path to French nationality, and restating our commitment to European integration in a Europe that official recognises its Judea-Christian roots and respects the sovereignty of nations.

2. Olivier Cadic, Alliance centriste, slogan: ‘La voix de la troisième France’ (the voice of the third France, an expression traditionally used with the meaning of ‘independents’, that is non-partisan voters, but Cadic considers the French ex-pat community to be the 3rd France). The Alliance centriste was created and is led by Jean Arthuis, a former Finance minister (during Chirac’s first presidency). Lives in Kent.

Already elected to the Assemblée des Français de l’Etranger, a consultative organ that is directly elected by French expats and elects their senators, Cadic opposes the introduction of income tax for expats (a major topic in the overseas campaign, mostly on the right side of the political spectrum). Unlike Dhiver, whose programme highlighted national issues, Cadic emphasises ex-pat issues: helping young French people who study abroad, encouraging the development of bilingual schools to allow French pupils to learn French (Cadic is involved in the Agency for the teaching of French abroad), simplifying administrative procedures for ex-pats, protecting the right to hold a double nationality, and ‘opening a cross-Channel metro [?] between Ashford and Calais’ to encourage trans-border work.

3. Anne-Marie Wolfsohn, independent. Her statement indicates that she has worked (as a lawyer) in the UK, Sweden and the Baltic countries (all of them in the third constituency), but it looks like she now lives in France.

Like Cadic, her first item is about her opposition to ex-pat income tax (in big letters on the first page), and the others address mostly ex-pat issues. Her proposals include facilitating R&D, creating a French business centre in London, encouraging the creation of more French schools abroad and in particular London (where most of the constituency’s voters reside), making administrative procedures easier for ex-pats, and creating a solidarity fund for French ex-pats living in countries affected by the crisis. The only national  issue on her programme is deficit reduction.

4. Lucile Jamet, Front de Gauche. Slogan: ‘Le changement à gauche’ (Change on the left – nil point for effort). The Front de Gauche is the electoral coalition bringing together the Communist Party, Jean-Luc Mélenchon‘s Left Party and the extreme-left Unitarian Left (Gauche Unitaire, a break-away party from the Revolutionary Communist League LCR, which is now the NPA, New Anti-capitalist Party). No idea where she lives. The FdG doesn’t seem to place a lot of emphasis on the personality of their young (24 y.o.) candidate. I guess there’s only room for Mélenchon’s personality in the party.

Her proposals include measures to secure social services and pension rights for ex-pats, setting up an income tax for ex-pats (not clearly stated, but it is there if you read between the lines: ‘setting up a tax system that makes every citizen contribute to the extent of their means to their country by paying a tax differential’), and to increase the provision of French education abroad. Other measures relate to fighting tax evasion and tax heavens and promoting of North-South relations based on sustainable development. A picture of and statement by Jean-Luc Mélenchon appear at the bottom of page 2. The Front de Gauche argues that the presence of FdG MPs will secure the adoption of left-wing measures by François Hollande.

5. Gaspard Koenig, Parti Libéral Démocrate. Slogan: ‘Pour une France plus libre…’. Lives in London.

Koenig, who used to be a speechwriter for Christine Lagarde, has lived in London and worked for the EBRD (European Bank for Reconstruction and Development) for three years. His party is the heir to Alain Madelin’s now defunct Démocratie Libérale, the true voice of liberalism in France. Like Boutin’s PCD and Arthuis’ Alliance Centriste, this is one of the small parties that used to be part of the UDF (the Union for a French Democracy was a centre-right federation of parties that was created to support Giscard d’Estaing after he was elected president in 1974). It ceased to exist when the UMP was created to unify the right and centre-right. Its former member parties have either disappeared, merged into the UMP, turned into the MoDem or the Nouveau Centre (New Centre). It can be hard to keep track of all the components of the French centre-right.

He is opposed to the taxation of French ex-pats and wants to import into France the ‘best’ out of our constituency: a British model for universities (well done, us! we’re role models), Swedish-style reduction in public spending, Irish-style low taxes, and Danish flexicurity. He also wants to encourage the development of SMEs, break monopolies and increase competition (after all, he’s a liberal), put an end of public servants’ privileged status and to the ‘nanny state’, and raise the profile of immigration as an essential instrument to foster economic growth.

7. Olivier de Chazeaux Alliance Républicaine Ecologique et Sociales (ARES), Parti Radical and Nouveau Centre. Slogan: Un député d’expérience et d’action’ (an experienced and active MP). A lawyer, he is the former mayor of Levallois-Perret (city on the outskirts of Paris) and former MP (1997-2002) in the Hauts-de-Seine (a traditional right-wing stronghold, where Sarkozy was elected MP and mayor). There is no evidence to suggest he lives in the constituency.

Page 2 shows the candidate in the National Assembly (when he was a RPR MP), with former PM François Fillon, and with Jacques Chirac, shaking hands with Finnish former rally driver Ari Vatanen (who, if I’m not mistaken, ran as a RPR or UMP candidate in French EP elections). He is now affiliated with ARES, a confederation of yet more former UDF parties, including the Hervé Morin‘s Nouveau Centre (part of the UDF that joined forces with the UMP in previous elections; Morin was minister of Defence, 2007-10), and Jean-Louis Borloo‘s Radical Party, another former UDF party (Borloo was environment minister between 2007 and 2010).

His proposals include a ‘fair’ taxation for ex-pats, by which he means that if an ex-pat owns a home in France, it should not be taxed as a second home but as primary residency, for which taxation is lower; increasing financial help to French ex-pats who want to send their children to French secondary school and high schools abroad (they are often fee-paying and quite expensive); ensuring a fair recognition of the years worked abroad in the evaluation of pensions; facilitating administrative formalities when ex-pats return to France; and making sure that the budget deficit is reduced.

8. Aberzak Boulariah, independent. Slogan: ‘Ni à gauche, ni à droite. Droit au but’ (this one might be my favourite: neither left nor right, to the point). Lives in Ireland (well, that’s a nice change from England/London!)

In fact, he may be my favourite full stop, in particular because he makes rhymes (see bottom of the page above) and describes himself as a ‘surprising MP’ (you bet; his election would certainly constitute a surprise). He also claims to have a ‘poetic political vision’, that is, he expresses his political vision in verses:

Boulariah proposes to make administrative formalities faster for ex-pats (who cares about the other 60+ million French losers still living in France, right? This criticism can also be made against other candidates), develop bilateral agreements for health insurance, oppose the taxation of ex-pats, and increase the number of bursaries available to students unable to afford the fees for French schools.

9. Guy Le Guezennec, Front National (Rassemblement Bleu Marine). Slogan: ‘Pour une Assemblée vraiment nationale!’. Lives in Ashford.

For some reason, the FN candidate chose to illustrate his propaganda with a black and white picture (though being an old white man, a colour picture might have given a similar impression). The leaflet illustrates the new name chosen by the party for the parliamentary elections: Rassemblement Bleu Marine (bleu marine is a shade of blue in French, but it is obviously a rather cheesy word-play with Marine Le Pen’s first name).

Marine Le Pen features prominently on p.2 of the leaflet, with a picture and a statement from the leader herself. The lower half of p.2 includes pledges to oppose the austerity plan, stop immigration (I guess it’s only good for us French ex-pats), implement ‘national preference for health and social services, be tough on crime, introduce PR and popular referendums,  defend ‘economic patriotism’, restore authority in schools, and stop communitarianism.

10. Axelle Lemaire, Socialist Party. Slogan: ‘Pour un nouveau départ, donnons une majorité au changement’ (a little too long to be catchy). Lives in London.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I have to say that I have met this candidate. Unless others have been poor at communicating with voters in Scotland, I believe that she is the only candidate who has come to our shores so far (the MoDem cabdidate comes tomorrow).

p.2 is illustrated with a picture of Lemaire with François Hollande. She promises to protect the right of bi-national citizens, refuses double taxation for ex-pats (in contradiction with PS policy?), and wants to make administrative formalities simpler, encourage student and professional mobility, secure pension rights acquired in other countries, and ‘democratise’ entry into French schools abroad. She says she has an international outlook (she was born and spent part of her youth in Quebec and has worked in the UK House of Commons), and her political priorities include cross-border issues, transport, sustainable energies, industrial co-operation, regulation of financial markets, gender equality and struggle against discrimination, and foreign relations.

These are the first 10 candidates. There are 10 more, but I have received electoral propaganda from only 7 of them.

To be continued…

A (electronically) voté!

This time, it worked!

I’m going to be honest with you: I don’t know what it is that I have done today and didn’t yesterday. I have the impression that I have only checked that what I did yesterday was correct, after I received an email from the help desk of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I got worried at first, as they told me that you had to have (Mac) OS X 10.6 or above. I have 10.5.8, but the system check accepted it as compatible with the voting system (in the spirit of the Europvision: Elo, 1 point; help desk, nil point). The system check also accepted my version of Javascript and my version of Safari. Only problem: Java. The same message appeared over and over again:

 Java : non installé ou la version détectée n’est pas compatible. Votre configuration ne satisfait pas les conditions requises pour pouvoir voter en toute sécurité par internet.

I made sure that the Java preferences corresponded to what the help desk; they looked like they were, but this message kept telling me something was wrong. Out of desperation, I started Firefox, and whereas it didn’t work yesterday, it did work today. Why it worked with one browser and not the other is beyond me, but here we go.

Armed with the letter that contained my login (yes, a paper letter with a scratch part, like a mobile phone top-up card. I also received an email with the login) and my password (sent by email), I logged on the voting page. The list of the 20 (yes, 20!) candidates and their alternate in my constituency (which includes the UK, Ireland, Iceland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) appeared on the screen. I was asked to select one, validate the choice and then confirm it. Once the vote confirmed, a receipt appeared on the screen, with a unique number corresponding to my vote.

You can see why some people might object to internet voting:

– The principle of the secrecy of the vote, which leads us to prevent children from entering the voting booth at the polling station, is impossible to uphold. Admittedly, this is also true in cases of proxy and postal voting, and proxy voting, and proxy voting is available across France.

– It may be easy for other people to access confidential information allowing one to vote,  unless one is the kind of person who keeps her mail under lock and makes sure that access to her email and mobile phone inbox is always password protected.

– With such specific technical requirements, internet voting is not really for everyone. If your computer automatically updated to Java 7, you need to be able to delete it and download and set up version 6. Not to mention that you need a lot of patience and perseverance. A few people told me at the polling station that their brand new computer was not compatible.

– These problems have led some people to vote on shred computers or from their office computer, where confidentiality may not be secured.

And these are only some of the few problems that have been associated with remote internet voting in these elections. See links below for more on the subject:

– Very comprehensive article in Marianne

– List of complaints from the Parti Pirate website

– OWNI http://owni.fr/2012/05/23/vote-internet-francais-etranger/

– Le Monde Des aujourd’hui les Français de l’étranger votent par internet

My electronic voting adventures

French overseas voters have been able to vote in the parliamentary elections electronically (through the Voter à l’étranger website) since Wednesday 23rd May. Those who wish to vote remotely by internet can do so until the 29th May, with a first round for overseas voters on 3rd June (10th in France). With a population that is hard to mobilise (turnout in the presidential elections was 42.09%), it was sensible to take measures to facilitate participation in an election that has a lower turnout rate than presidential elections (on average, turnout is 7 points lower in parliamentary elections).

I wanted to try it out, not because I think it is more convenient than having to go to the polling station (where I will be a volunteer once again), neither because I think it’s a great idea (there are concerns about security and eh secrecy of the vote; more on that later), but because I was curious to see how it worked, since I was planning to write about it. Imagine my disappointment (but not my surprise) when I realised that I wasn’t able to vote through the interwebs.

On the Voter à l’Etranger page, there is a link to a page that tests the configuration of your computer to make sure that it is compatible with the voting system. This tests your computer OS, but also the version of Java and Javascript installed on your computer. And here comes my problem, in the form of the following message:

Java : non installé ou la version détectée n’est pas compatible. Votre configuration ne satisfait pas les conditions requises pour pouvoir voter en toute sécurité par internet.

or: Java not installed or the version is not compatible. Your configuration does not satisfy the required conditions to be allowed to vote electronically safely.

There is no problem with my computer (a Macbook), it tells me, and I receive the same message whether I use Firefox or Safari. So I checked whether Java needed to be updated, and my computer says No, thanks, all is fine here, no Java update to be found. Maybe it’s because my laptop is a wee bit old my laptop standards (4 and a half), maybe not. Who knows? There is a website that tries to explain what to do when you are informed that your configuration is not compatible, and there is also a helpline, which I will not call, as it may be a long wait and, to be fair, I can’t really be bothered. And it looked to easy on the video!

I then decided to get assistance online. For some reason, the form was not working (it said that something was wrong with either the information on my email address, the OS or browser that I gave them. It seems difficult to get the OS or browser info wrong, since it’s a scroll down menu with nothing to write down, and I have checked, I did enter a proper email address (and it does exist it’s mine!). So I had to copy all this into an email, and now all I have to do is wait for an answer.

If you are interested in internet voting in the French parliamentary elections and all the problems associated with it (and can read French), I suggest you click on the following links:

– Parti Pirate They have a complaints board with testimonies of people who have failed, and also sometimes people who have managed to vote by internet.

– Libération and OWNI about technical difficulties and concerns about security

To be continued…

French presidential elections in Scotland (part deux)

The second round of the French presidential elections took place on Sunday, and I was back at the polling station. This time, however, I was only there between 11 am to 8 pm) much better than 7.45 am to 10.45 pm), all thanks to a small influx of volunteers (a larger influx would have allowed me and last week’s president of the poling station to only go to the polling station to vote, but I’m not complaining). Having more volunteers and the experience from two weeks ago seriously improved the working of the polling station, and people seemed to have come less in waves, which also reduced queuing times.

Things worked out a lot better, and yet we found ourselves with two more ballots than signatures on the register. This mystery will remain unsolved, although we expect that some people may have left without signing (though we are careful to make sure they do), possibly in cases of proxy voting, when they must vote and sign several times.

Figure 1. Election results and turnout, 2^nd round 2012 French presidential election (France, overseas, Scotland)

The results show that the overseas community remains mainly right-wing (Nicolas Sarkozy received 53.05% of the overseas vote), but that Scotland has again bucked this trend, confirming the results of the first round.

As for the first round, there were polling stations in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen, with respectively 1390, 882 and 589 registered voters. Figure 2 below shows turnout was highest in Aberdeen. Overall, across Scotland, turnout increased between the two rounds by 2.28 percentage points. It remained stable in Glasgow (+0.42), increased by 2.4 points in Edinburgh and by 3.7 points in Aberdeen.

 Figure 2. Results of the second round of the 2012 French presidential election in Scotland

François Hollande won with a very significant margin in Edinburgh (66.31% of valid ballots) and Glasgow (69.08%), whereas Nicolas Sarkozy won in Aberdeen (51.06%). These results reflect again the differences between Aberdeen on the one hand and Glasgow and Edinburgh on the other.

The score of Nicolas Sarkozy suggests that he did not benefit from a perfect transfer of votes from centrist candidate Bayrou, sovereignists (i.e. Europsceptic) candidate Dupont-Aignant and extreme-right candidate Le Pen. On average, Sarkozy’s share of the vote is 6.5 points lower than their combined share of the vote in the first round. Between the two rounds, centrist candidate François Bayrou, a former minister in Chirac governments, declared that he would vote for François Hollande but did not explicitly ask his voters to do the same. It is also noteworthy to observe that the share of spoiled ballots increased from 1.52% of the vote to 4.66, suggesting that some voters may have followed Marine Le Pen’s recommendation to her voters to ‘count themselves’ through spoiled ballots. This poor transfer of votes toward Sarkozy is confirmed by figure 3 below. In the second round, his share of the vote is below the combined share of the vote of the right and centre.

Figure 3. Comparison of the results of Hollande and Sarkozy with the results by block in the 1^st round

Hollande received a higher share of the vote than the whole left in the first round, but a lower share of the vote than the left and centre combined. This suggests that only a fraction of the centrist electorate followed Bayrou in voting Hollande. Hollande nonetheless increased the share of the vote for the left by 9.4 points in Glasgow (share of the Bayrou vote in the first round 15.3%), 6.68 points in Aberdeen (21.51% for Bayrou), 5.93 points in Edinburgh (13.15% for Bayrou), and 6.93 % overall in Scotland (15.48). This suggests that increased turnout and transfers from Bayrou all contributed to increasing Hollande’s share of the vote.

Comparing polling stations and what happens there: Britain and France

With the local elections that took place yesterday and my experience as election officer nearly two weeks ago for the first round of the French presidential elections, I was once again able to compare the organisation of polling stations in France and in Britain. Here are a few observations and remarkable differences:

– When do you vote? In Britain, elections are on Thursdays, usually the first Thursday of May. In France, you vote on Sundays (and many times, since most elections have two rounds.

– Where can you find polling stations? In France, they are usually public buildings, but there can be exceptions. For instance, the polling station in Aberdeen was at the Total school (yes, as in Total the oil company. It’s Aberdeen). In Britain, it is rather common for polling stations to be in schools.  Last year, I voted in a Stockbridge primary school for the Scottish Parliament election. In Edinburgh, many churches were also used to house polling stations. Coming from a country with separation between state and church, I found that not a little odd (but so did my English flatmate, so maybe voting in churches is a Scottish thing). But it was not as odd as the polling station in the Lauriston Place Novotel.

– Candidates standing outside polling stations: In Edinburgh as everywhere around the country, candidates and their agents were standing outside polling stations with a rosette on their lapel. In France, it is forbidden to campaign outside polling stations. Of course, this is not really a problem we have abroad, since we’re really, really far from the candidates, and campaigning for a French election outside the polling station would be campaigning on foreign soil, which might be construed as a breach of public order. In fact, in France, campaigning altogether ends at midnight on the Friday preceding the (Sunday) election. This day without campaigning (also common to other countries) is called a ‘day of reflection’, when voters can think about their choice without last-minute candidate interference, or get a welcome break after a very long campaign.

Here is the image of a Green candidate standing outside a polling station in Glasgow.

– Display of electoral propaganda at the polling station. In France, posters are displayed outside the room where voting takes place in an order predetermined by the Constitutional Court, and the ballot papers are placed on the table in the same order. As the picture below suggests, rules about displays of electoral propaganda outside polling stations are, well, a lot more relaxed in Britain.

– Making sure that the right person is voting. In a French polling station, anyone who wants to vote needs a form of identification with a picture (national identity card, passport, which can be expired by up to 2 years, driver’s licence and, abroad, consular registration card). The first thing a voter does is present her card to a person in charge of making sure that she is on the electoral register. Before she casts her ballot, she must again show her ID to a person at the voting table, where her identity will be checked again. This tends to create a bit of a delay in front of the ballot box, as voters tend to put their ID back in their pocket, bag or purses, and they have to look for the ID again. She will then be able to cast her ballot and sign the electoral register.

In Britain, the electoral register is organised by address and not alphabetically by voters name. As a result, the person in charge of checking that you are on the electoral register asks for your address. You do not have to show your polling card (good for because mine had been sent at my old address, and I voted in my old ward) or any form of ID. Of course they do not have ID cards here. But as my name is odd by local standards, I thought that showing him my passport to check for the name would be helpful. He absolutely didn’t care.

– The polling booth. In France, polling booths have a curtain to protect the secrecy of the vote. Election officers must make sure that people do indeed draw the curtain behind them after they’ve entered the booth. In the UK, you’ve guessed it, no curtain. You only have your back to protect the secrecy of your vote from prying eyes (though who would care who I voted for is beyond me).

– Children in the polling booth. In France, it is absolutely verboten! As mentioned above, voting is secret and this secret must be protected from all, children included. Exceptions can be made for babies, but that’s it. In the absence of clear guidelines about this, the Edinburgh polling station took the ability to walk as a cut-off point. You can walk, however small you may be, then you’re out of the voting booth. Many kids wanted to go and see what happens in the booth, and we had to disappoint them all. There were even tears once, but we had to remain stoic. In the UK, of course, children up to 18 can go in the booth with their parents (though to be fair, the booths were pretty small – not like our fancy booth that could accommodate a wheelchair). It is (probably understandably) seen as a way to familiarise children with a key part of the democratic process. Of course, sometimes allowing a child in the polling booth is wrong, very wrong.

– The ballot box. In Edinburgh, the ballot box was a black plastic box, with a slot in the front, facing toward the voters. No one checked what I was doing. French ballot boxes more or less look like this:

A transparent box, with a closable slot that is usually opened with a lever activated by an election officer. The box is transparent to show to those present at the opening of the polling station that it is empty at the start of the election. There is also usually a little counter activated by the lever. In my experience, the lever is very sensitive, and it is easy to activate the counter without noticing. I think the counter indicated four or five more ballots than we actually had in the box. In addition to the level, a thick copy of the Electoral Code is usually kept over the slot between ballots.

– A voté! One very big part of the French voting ritual is the ‘a voté!’ pronounced by the person standing behind the ballot box. I remember feeling very proud after hearing my first ‘a voté!’. You oddly feel like you’ve really achieved something. Of course, after I’ve said it a couple hundred times 2 weeks ago, I bet it won’t have the same effect any more. In Britain, no such official acknowledgement that you’ve accomplished your duty as a citizen. Maybe because it’s only normal, so there’s really no need to shout about it. In fact, no one was

– The exit. After you’ve cast your ballot in a French polling station and someone has said ‘a voté’, you’re not quite done. You still have to sign next to your name in the electoral register. Then, you get your ID back, and you’re ready to go. In Britain, after you’ve cast your ballot, you’re done and you can leave, often to go to work (unless you’ve come after work).

I have long come to the conclusion that the polling station is the last place in Britain with complete social trust. When you vote, no one cares who you are as long as some one else doesn’t try to use your name (or rather, address) to vote. In contrast, if there are a lot of people enjoying the sun in the Meadows, you can be sure a mobile CCTV unit will be dispatched on site. Voting is also looks like a very relaxed affair, with fewer rules than in France. Here is a nice article from the BBC website about the dos and don’ts in British polling stations

In France, in contrast, it looks like a history of failed Republics, fixed elections and late institutionalisation of democracy have led to a very regulated process, in which your identity is checked and checked again, the number of ballots that you take is counted (with one ballot paper per candidate and the secrecy of the vote, voters must show that they enter the both with at least two ballot papers), and your civil act rewarded with an ‘a voté’. This makes voting in France very much of a ritual> A secular Sunday ritual.

French Presidential elections in Scotland!

So the first round of the French presidential elections was on Sunday. I had volunteered as an election officer (assesseur/se), so I was busy all day at the polling station.^* Overall, this was a very interesting (and tiring) day. I got to understanding and experiencing some of the more minute points of election organisation. For instance, voters are supposed to enter the polling booth alone. Where does that leave their children? So we disappointed children when we told them that they couldn’t accompany their parent in the booth and that they could not cast the ballot for their parents. We also had tears from a 3-year-old who also wanted to vote. Let’s hope she is as committed to voting when she turn 18 as she is now.

Recently, I have been thinking a lot about ex-pat vote and looked into data about the electoral participation of French expats for what will hopefully become a paper in a few months (I’m hopeful but not certain, as I rely on the willingness of French administrations to make detailed data available).

Yesterday therefore represented a rather unique opportunity to see who ‘these people’ were (well, at least in Edinburgh). Participation was higher than last time around (45.8% in Edinburgh, compared to a number in the lower 30% five years ago). A few people mentioned that it was the first time they voted (and they certainly looked like they were over 18 in 2007) or that they hadn’t voted in a long time. It is true that the French expat community had been strongly encouraged to register to vote, with, among other things, a rather intensive ad campaign (every time I accessed the website of Le Monde the ad on the right hand-side was about how French people living abroad could register to vote for the 2012 elections and the voting methods), and the campaign itself was quite intense for us, with many emails from the different candidates.^**

Figure 1 above shows that my first impressions from the Edinburgh polling station are in fact misleading. While turnout in France (without expats) has ever so slightly increased against expectations, turnout abroad has slightly decreased. The number of registered voters on consular lists has increased by close to 200,000, but turnout has decreased by a little over a percentage point.

Figure 1. Turnout, 1^st round of presidential elections since 1981

Source: Ministère de l’Intérieur, de l’Outre Mer, des Collectivités Territoriales et de l’Immigration; Sénat

Below is a first look at the results of the French elections and a comparison of the vote in France as a whole (expats included), abroad (overall results for all expats) and in Scotland.

Figure 2. Results by candidates (France, overseas, Scotland), 1^st round 2012 presidential elections

French expats are usually considered to be more right-wing than those who stayed France. Figure 2 shows that incumbent president and main right-wing candidate Nicolas Sarkozy was more popular abroad than in France (+10.8 points). François Hollande, the Socialist candidate, attracted similar shares of the vote in France and abroad. The most striking difference concerns, perhaps unsurprisingly, the score of the extreme right (17.9% in France and 5.95% abroad). Overall, the extremes were less popular abroad, with lower score for Jean-Luc Mélenchon (communist alliance) and the two Trotskyite candidates Arthaud and Poutou. In contrast, the centre candidate Bayrou was more successful abroad than in France (+ 2.2) and green candidate Eva Joly (+3.1).

Table 1. Results of the 1^st round in France (overall results), abroad and in Scotland (%)

	France	Abroad	Scotland
M. Le Pen	18.01	5.95	3.99
J. Cheminade	0.25	0.36	0.40
N. Dupont-Aignan	1.79	1.28	2.39
N. Sarkozy	27.08	38.00	21.39
F. Bayrou	9.11	11.37	15.48
F. Hollande	28.63	28.31	35.04
E. Joly	2.28	5.44	10.30
J.-L. Mélenchon	11.10	8.31	9.18
P. Poutou	1.15	0.70	1.28
N. Arthaud	0.56	0.28	0.56

Sources: Ministère de l’Intérieur, Consulat Général de France à Edimbourg

Scotland presents a rather distinctive picture, with an electorate significantly more to the left than the French electorate and the overall French population abroad (see table 1 above for the numbers). Hollande received 35% of the vote in Scotland (+6.5 points compared to France), while Sarkozy won 21.4% of the vote (-5.8). Bayrou and Joly are also more popular in Scotland than in France (+6.35 for Bayrou, and +8 for Joly) and in the rest of the expat community.

Figure 3. Election results in Scotland and in the three Scottish polling stations (% by candidate)

Figure 3 above, in which the candidates are ordered from extreme-left to extreme-right, shows that there are also differences within Scotland. For the first time, the consulate set up polling stations outside of Edinburgh, with one in Glasgow serving the East of Scotland and one in Aberdeen for the North East.

Aberdeen, where a significant share of the French expat community works in a job related to the oil industry, shows rather distinct results from the rest of Scotland. As might have ben expected, green candidate Eva Joly receives a much lower share of the vote than in Edinburgh and Glasgow (the boss of Total, Jean Veil, wrote an article against Joly in Le Monde last week). Nicolas Sarkozy did a lot better in Aberdeen (close to 30%) than in Edinburgh or Glasgow (respectively 20 and 17%). Overall, Aberdeen voters tended to vote more for the three main candidates, and with a more balanced distribution of their vote between them (29% for both Hollande and Sarkozy, and 21% for Bayrou). In Edinburgh and Glasgow, the gap between the different candidates is more important, as Hollande holds a strong lead over the other two candidates (over Sarkozy, 18 points in Glasgow and nearly 17 points in Edinburgh; over Bayrou, 20 points in Glasgow and 24 points in Edinburgh).

Without socio-demographic indicators about the French population overseas and in Scotland, it is impossible to make inferences from these voting patterns. However, French voters in Scotland clearly do not match the stereotype of the right-wing, tax-dodging French expatriate.

Looking forward to next week’s second round, when I’ll send a lot less time in the polling station!

^* The photographer came at the busiest time; it wasn’t always like this, with people queuing outside the consulate. Of course, a queue makes a better photo than the entrance of the building with an open door (it was not possible to take pictures inside the polling station).

^** Rather controversially, the email address of registered voters was made available to the candidates. Few people knew when they registered at and gave their email address to the consulate that this address would be used by candidates to send them electoral propaganda. People were also encouraged to provide their email address because it is necessary to be able to vote remotely by internet for the parliamentary elections. It was apparently written in small print at the bottom of the form that political parties would have access to the list, but no one noticed.