Organisation : Ministry of The Interior
Facility : Electoral System & Methods Of Voting
Country : France
Electoral System : https://www.interieur.gouv.fr/Elections/Les-elections-en-France/Les-modalites-d-elections/Le-systeme-electoral
Methods of Voting : https://www.interieur.gouv.fr/Elections/Les-elections-en-France/Les-modalites-d-elections/Les-differents-modes-de-scrutins
Electoral System :
** The vote is universal: the right to vote belongs to all citizens of voting age.
** Voting is strictly personal
Related : Ministry of The Interior France Parliamentary Elections Results 2017 : www.electionin.org/2336.html
** Voting is free
** Voting is secret: no one should try to know or control the voting of a voter.
Material provisions are provided at polling stations to protect the freedom and secrecy of voting. The principal is the compulsory passage through the polling booth, where the elector will put in an envelope the bulletin of his choice. He then deposits it in the transparent ballot box and signs in front of his name on the electoral list.
Being a voter :
To be a voter, you must be of French nationality, be over 18 years of age and enjoy civil and political rights. Moreover, the right to vote is subject to registration on an electoral roll.
A derogation from the principle of nationality was provided by the Maastricht Treaty, which was ratified in September 1992. Community nationals now have the right to vote in European and municipal elections provided they are entered on supplementary lists of electors.
Be eligible :
Eligibility is the possibility of running for election. To be eligible for an election, you must first of all be an elector and of French nationality, but specific conditions may exist depending on the ballot, in particular the personal relationship between the candidate and the community.
The age requirement also differs depending on the election :
** 18 years for municipal, cantonal and regional and legislative elections,
** 24 years for Senate elections.
The nationality requirement is extended for municipal elections and European elections for which the candidate may be a national of one of the member states of the European Union.
Methods Of Voting :
The majority voting system :
The principle of majority voting is simple. The candidate or candidates obtaining the majority of the votes cast shall be elected. It is therefore a question of entrusting the representation of the whole of a constituency to the candidates who come in the lead without taking into account the votes collected by its competitors.
The ballot may be uninominal if there is a seat to be filled by constituency. Voters then vote for only one candidate. The national territory is divided into as many constituencies as there are seats to be filled.
The ballot is multi-faceted if there are several seats to be filled by constituency. The voters vote for several candidates who can present themselves separately or on lists: this is called a list vote.
The latter are said to be blocked if the number of candidates on the list is necessarily equal to the number of seats to be filled and if the voters are not able to modify their composition or the order of presentation. To introduce flexibility, mixing or preferential voting is sometimes permitted.
Mixing allows voters to remove names from the list for which they vote and to replace them with those of the candidates on other lists. The preferential vote gives voters the possibility of classifying the candidates of the same list according to their preferences.
In the first-round majority vote, the result is acquired in the first round regardless of the percentage of the votes cast by the candidates, or the list, which has reached the top. The relative majority is enough to be elected. This mode does not exist in France.
In the two-round majority, an absolute majority of the votes cast is generally required to be elected in the first round. Otherwise there is a ballot and organization of a second round at the end of which the candidate or the list arrived at the top are elected whatever the percentage of the votes obtained.
The presence in the second round may be subject to certain conditions: for example, obtaining a certain percentage of the entries or votes cast in the first round.
Proportional representation :
Proportional representation is a generally one-round list system. The seats to be filled in a constituency shall be distributed among the different lists present in proportion to the number of votes they have collected.
In order to participate in the allocation of seats, the lists must generally reach a certain percentage of the votes cast. The calculation is then carried out in two steps.
The first allocation is based on an electoral quotient that can be determined in advance (fixed quotient) or, most commonly in France, calculated by dividing the total number of votes cast in the constituency by the number of votes Seats to be filled.
This quotient is equal to the number of votes needed to have a seat. At first, each list gets as many seats as it has at times reached the electoral quotient.
But this first distribution leaves remains, that is to say unfilled seats. The distribution of the remains can be made either at the strongest remnant or at the highest average.
The strongest distribution still implies that in each constituency, unfilled seats should be allocated to each list in the order of decreasing vacancy after the first distribution. This method favors small formations, in particular those which have not been able to obtain the electoral quotient but have approached it and have strong remains.
In the distribution with the highest average, it is necessary to calculate what would be for each list the average of the votes obtained by seats allocated if one granted fictitiously to each one an additional seat. The list that obtains the highest average gets a seat. The operation is repeated as many times as there are seats to be filled.
Once the number of seats allocated to each list has been determined, it is still necessary to determine which candidates will benefit. Generally, the order of presentation of the list is followed.