Ellen Aldin
The United States is not the only country with presidential elections in 2012; France has them too. For my internship, I have the opportunity to work in a polling station, and here’s what I noticed for the April 23 elections:
– The voting process is very communal. When a person votes, he has a conversation with the people that are working there; it’s a social event! Also, instead of having absentee ballots, the French that cannot be present at their polling place on Election Day vote by procuration, which is giving the right to vote to someone else in your place. In this case, the person that cannot vote has to communicate his choice to the person to whom he has given procuration, an extremely personal choice in the United States. However, in France, one can discuss the election and personal choices regarding the elections pretty freely; it’s not as private.
– The votes are revealed publicly. At my polling place, when the voting had finished, the envelopes with the ballots inside were opened in front of a small crowd, which was open to the public. When the workers opened the envelopes, they said the name on the ballot inside out loud so that everyone present could hear the trends in that particular polling place at the same time.
But this process is going to continue; in France, the presidential elections use a two-step system. This means that the first election has over 2 candidates, and the purpose of this election is to take the two candidates with the most votes to go head to head against each other in the second election. The winner of this second election wins the presidency. The first election already happened and Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande are the candidates for the second election on May 7. Therefore, there will be another election and I can see the nuances between the two elections in a French presidential election.
