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The first article of this series of two explains the vote itself : https://lacampagne.substack.com/p/a-vote https://lacampagne.substack.com/p/a-vote It's simpl

by Rexxar 5y ago

The first article of this series of two explains the vote itself : https://lacampagne.substack.com/p/a-vote https://lacampagne.substack.com/p/a-vote It's simple, safe and efficient. I don't understand why USA are not doing something similar. All this voting machines, mail votes, counting/recounting where ballots are manipulated by so many people seems strange, inefficient and prone to fraud.

karteum 5y ago
> It's simple, safe and efficient We all know that having a single turn (like in the US) leads to a political landscape with 2 major political parties and few nuances (but the major problem in the US system is "the winner takes it all" policy in most states: if the number of members of the electoral college were proportional to votes in each states, the results would already be more fair) But the French system (with 2 turns) is also very far from optimal and non-linear, and also leads (to a lesser extent, and some variants/surprises) to 2 major political parties + some smaller "satellite" political parties. And some issue are for example that * sometimes, a candidate that would win against all others has a too low score at the first turn to pass to the 2nd turn (this is what happens in 2007 where all polls said that François Bayrou (who was center/moderate and more consensual) would have won both against Nicolas Sarkozy and against Ségolène Royal, but couldn't get enough votes to pass the 1st turn) * sometimes, the opposite issue happens i.e. a candidate that has no chances to win the 2nd turn has enough votes to pass the 1st turn: this is what happened in 2002 when Le Pen (extreme right wing) supplanted Jospin and went to the 2nd turn (that Chirac was then 100% certain to win at that time, with a consequence that there were no real/constructive debate about the programs) * some people who have new ideas cannot participate because you need 500 signatures of already-elected people in order to participate (so if you are not a member of an established political party, it's very hard to become a candidate to the presidential election) Just to say that there is no binary split between "democracy" and "dictature" : the voting system and algorithm influences a lot the political landscape and therefore the debates. Maybe people here are familiar with the Condorcet method used (among other things) in https://www.debian.org/vote https://www.debian.org/vote which is better in my opinion (yet a little bit difficult to implement in a wider scale such as a presidential election). Another approach / voting method that I quite like is this one (only in French, sorry) https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jugement_majoritaire https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jugement_majoritaire : I like it because 1°/ it is simple to implement and to understand, 2°/ it would inherently avoid the issues above and forces the candidates to be more consensual (i.e. to become "president for everyone") rather than cleaving, while still enabling nuances to express during the debates (not only on a "binary" axis left/right).
- jnaddef 5y ago
  > * sometimes, a candidate that would win against all others has a too low score at the first turn to pass to the 2nd turn (this is what happens in 2007 where all polls said that François Bayrou (who was center/moderate and more consensual) would have won both against Nicolas Sarkozy and against Ségolène Royal, but couldn't get enough votes to pass the 1st turn) I am surprised you chose this example when an even clearer example was the Jospin/Chirac/LePen situation during the previous election
pjerem 5y ago
Make no mistakes : voting machines are a recurring topic of law propositions. We avoided them until now but they are waiting just around the corner. Which is terrible because, I agree with your stake : our voting procedure is probably one of the few things that works perfectly in our political system. Nobody ever complained about it and it have never been hijacked.
mytailorisrich 5y ago
"The République is universal and therefore spans the entire planet." That's a strange interpretation. Regarding elections the key is that the French Republic put a very strong emphasize on equality among citizens. So all citizens should be represented in Parliament and all citizens have the right to vote for the President.
- southerntofu 5y ago
  > the French Republic put a very strong emphasize on equality among citizens That's a strange interpretation. France is one of the countries with the highest levels of inequalities, and one of the most racist countries on earth where even little girls can't be allowed into school if they display signs of muslim worship (but a christian cross is fine). Also, many people who reside in France are denied citizenship. > So all citizens should be represented in Parliament The french electoral system was precisely designed to prevent actual representation of the people which was deemed too dangerous by the elites of the 18th century. The 5th republic famously does not have proportional elections, so you end up with a notable part of the population not being represented at all, which arguably favors the far-right in their political agenda of pretending they're being oppressed (despite them having cultural hegemony across the political landscape). > all citizens have the right to vote for the President Yet only few can run for president. And even if you vote, what's it gonna change? The president is not bound by law to any electoral promise, has immunity from all corruption investigation, and has absolute powers.
  - Veen 5y ago
    > where even little girls can't be allowed into school if they display signs of muslim worship That's only racist if it discriminates against a particular group. It doesn't. Little girls can't wear crucifixes and little boys can't wear the kippah either. You seem to think that Muslims should be exempted, but why should they get special treatment? They're expected to adhere to France's secular approach to public institutions the same as everyone else.
    - southerntofu 5y ago
deanCommie 5y ago
> It's simple, safe and efficient. I don't understand why USA are not doing something similar. It's a very easy explanation. France and many other countries in Western Europe like it have a National Identity register. You simply cannot exist in society without being effectively registered with the government. (Which of course is free to citizens, and primarily offers convenience not burden) That national ID system is what ensures electoral integrity allowing the actual technical aspects of elections to be simple safe and efficient. And the reason why this can never work in the US is because culturally and politically, Americans deem that this level of federal government knowledge of it's citizens location and existence, is an imposition on liberty. This is true broadly across political lines (even if the more Left-leaning folks are comfortable with imitating Europe, and the more Right-leaning folks are comfortable with introducing burdens to voting with NOT free identity requirements) As a Canadian who moved to Europe and then went back, I genuinely see value in both philosophies.
- seszett 5y ago
  France doesn't exactly have a national identity register. Many other European countries do (like Belgium where I live) but France has a collection of registers, one or more per administration, each limited to the relevant information needed for that administration to perform its duties, and sharing information between them is forbidden by law outside of a few cases. Thus, many people vote in a different place than where they live and where they are registered for the tax admin. The address on one's identity card is often obsolete by a decade. The address on my passport is yet another one, obsolete as well but that doesn't actually matter because it's never used as a proof of residence. Social security is the closest thing there is in France to a national register, but no other admin or organisation is allowed to use the social security number. And the contact address they have can very well be out of date as well. Law enforcement came to "my door" a few months ago (to ask if I could help them with logs of my server on a case) and they actually were lucky because they came to my parents' house (an address I had forgotten to update in my host's contact info) just as I was on holidays there, but they didn't even know I had been living in Belgium for years. Since I wasn't a suspect, they had no right to actually know any info from the various national administrations. I lived in Canada for a year and some and it seemed to me to be basically the same, although maybe I didn't stay long enough to know more about how it works there.

by Rexxar 5y ago

karteum 5y ago

> It's simple, safe and efficient We all know that having a single turn (like in the US) leads to a political landscape with 2 major political parties and few nuances (but the major problem in the US system is "the winner takes it all" policy in most states: if the number of members of the electoral college were proportional to votes in each states, the results would already be more fair) But the French system (with 2 turns) is also very far from optimal and non-linear, and also leads (to a lesser extent, and some variants/surprises) to 2 major political parties + some smaller "satellite" political parties. And some issue are for example that * sometimes, a candidate that would win against all others has a too low score at the first turn to pass to the 2nd turn (this is what happens in 2007 where all polls said that François Bayrou (who was center/moderate and more consensual) would have won both against Nicolas Sarkozy and against Ségolène Royal, but couldn't get enough votes to pass the 1st turn) * sometimes, the opposite issue happens i.e. a candidate that has no chances to win the 2nd turn has enough votes to pass the 1st turn: this is what happened in 2002 when Le Pen (extreme right wing) supplanted Jospin and went to the 2nd turn (that Chirac was then 100% certain to win at that time, with a consequence that there were no real/constructive debate about the programs) * some people who have new ideas cannot participate because you need 500 signatures of already-elected people in order to participate (so if you are not a member of an established political party, it's very hard to become a candidate to the presidential election) Just to say that there is no binary split between "democracy" and "dictature" : the voting system and algorithm influences a lot the political landscape and therefore the debates. Maybe people here are familiar with the Condorcet method used (among other things) in https://www.debian.org/vote https://www.debian.org/vote which is better in my opinion (yet a little bit difficult to implement in a wider scale such as a presidential election). Another approach / voting method that I quite like is this one (only in French, sorry) https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jugement_majoritaire https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jugement_majoritaire : I like it because 1°/ it is simple to implement and to understand, 2°/ it would inherently avoid the issues above and forces the candidates to be more consensual (i.e. to become "president for everyone") rather than cleaving, while still enabling nuances to express during the debates (not only on a "binary" axis left/right).

jnaddef 5y ago
> * sometimes, a candidate that would win against all others has a too low score at the first turn to pass to the 2nd turn (this is what happens in 2007 where all polls said that François Bayrou (who was center/moderate and more consensual) would have won both against Nicolas Sarkozy and against Ségolène Royal, but couldn't get enough votes to pass the 1st turn) I am surprised you chose this example when an even clearer example was the Jospin/Chirac/LePen situation during the previous election

pjerem 5y ago

Make no mistakes : voting machines are a recurring topic of law propositions. We avoided them until now but they are waiting just around the corner. Which is terrible because, I agree with your stake : our voting procedure is probably one of the few things that works perfectly in our political system. Nobody ever complained about it and it have never been hijacked.

mytailorisrich 5y ago

"The République is universal and therefore spans the entire planet." That's a strange interpretation. Regarding elections the key is that the French Republic put a very strong emphasize on equality among citizens. So all citizens should be represented in Parliament and all citizens have the right to vote for the President.

southerntofu 5y ago
> the French Republic put a very strong emphasize on equality among citizens That's a strange interpretation. France is one of the countries with the highest levels of inequalities, and one of the most racist countries on earth where even little girls can't be allowed into school if they display signs of muslim worship (but a christian cross is fine). Also, many people who reside in France are denied citizenship. > So all citizens should be represented in Parliament The french electoral system was precisely designed to prevent actual representation of the people which was deemed too dangerous by the elites of the 18th century. The 5th republic famously does not have proportional elections, so you end up with a notable part of the population not being represented at all, which arguably favors the far-right in their political agenda of pretending they're being oppressed (despite them having cultural hegemony across the political landscape). > all citizens have the right to vote for the President Yet only few can run for president. And even if you vote, what's it gonna change? The president is not bound by law to any electoral promise, has immunity from all corruption investigation, and has absolute powers.
- Veen 5y ago
  > where even little girls can't be allowed into school if they display signs of muslim worship That's only racist if it discriminates against a particular group. It doesn't. Little girls can't wear crucifixes and little boys can't wear the kippah either. You seem to think that Muslims should be exempted, but why should they get special treatment? They're expected to adhere to France's secular approach to public institutions the same as everyone else.
  - southerntofu 5y ago

deanCommie 5y ago

> It's simple, safe and efficient. I don't understand why USA are not doing something similar. It's a very easy explanation. France and many other countries in Western Europe like it have a National Identity register. You simply cannot exist in society without being effectively registered with the government. (Which of course is free to citizens, and primarily offers convenience not burden) That national ID system is what ensures electoral integrity allowing the actual technical aspects of elections to be simple safe and efficient. And the reason why this can never work in the US is because culturally and politically, Americans deem that this level of federal government knowledge of it's citizens location and existence, is an imposition on liberty. This is true broadly across political lines (even if the more Left-leaning folks are comfortable with imitating Europe, and the more Right-leaning folks are comfortable with introducing burdens to voting with NOT free identity requirements) As a Canadian who moved to Europe and then went back, I genuinely see value in both philosophies.

seszett 5y ago
France doesn't exactly have a national identity register. Many other European countries do (like Belgium where I live) but France has a collection of registers, one or more per administration, each limited to the relevant information needed for that administration to perform its duties, and sharing information between them is forbidden by law outside of a few cases. Thus, many people vote in a different place than where they live and where they are registered for the tax admin. The address on one's identity card is often obsolete by a decade. The address on my passport is yet another one, obsolete as well but that doesn't actually matter because it's never used as a proof of residence. Social security is the closest thing there is in France to a national register, but no other admin or organisation is allowed to use the social security number. And the contact address they have can very well be out of date as well. Law enforcement came to "my door" a few months ago (to ask if I could help them with logs of my server on a case) and they actually were lucky because they came to my parents' house (an address I had forgotten to update in my host's contact info) just as I was on holidays there, but they didn't even know I had been living in Belgium for years. Since I wasn't a suspect, they had no right to actually know any info from the various national administrations. I lived in Canada for a year and some and it seemed to me to be basically the same, although maybe I didn't stay long enough to know more about how it works there.