Election Season

One of the most fun things about being in France is following the elections.  You never know what will happen.

Well, actually you do.  The Socialist party of president Francois Hollande will get its butt kicked.  That’s been the trend ever since he was elected.  Every year there is some big national election and he gets to play the piñata.

This time it was the election for France’s 101 departements.  A departement is somewhere in between a state and a county and each departement elects a council of about 40 members. 

No one quite knows what they do, something about tourism and road maintenance.  Maybe rodent control, too.  But in a highly centralized government like France, you can be sure they don’t have any real power.  So why do they exist? With over 4,000 well-paid positions, I think it might just be an attempt to fight France’s chronic unemployment.

Anyway, the elections took place Sunday and the Socialists lost about half of their seats.  Ho hum, let’s take another swing at the piñata.  The conservative UMP party of former president Sarkozy was the big winner, so now Sarko is strutting around, acting like he’s going to be the next president.  The only problem is that this reminds everyone of why they hate Sarko.  Plus, he’s under about a dozen different investigations for corruption so it’s hard to see him being reelected president.

This leaves the Front National, the extreme right-wing party founded by Jean-Marie Le Pen (famous anti-Semite and general crazy guy) and now run by his daughter Marine.  Since Marine took over a few years ago and kicked out the skinheads and other unsavory types, the FN has improved its electoral results dramatically.   In last year’s European elections they came in first, with nearly 30% of the vote.

This time the FN got about 25% but only won a few seats, due to the way France’s two-round election system works.  There is also the question of whether they have hit a natural ceiling of support, something I’ll write about in another post.

The fun part is what happens next.  Every departement has just elected 40 councilors and now they have to vote for the president of their council.  For most departements, one of the parties has a majority of the councilors and will win.  But what happens if no one has a majority?

First, the leading parties try to form a coalition with the smaller parties to gain a majority.   But that’s hard to do because it might mean joining forces with the FN and no one wants to do that.

So the council holds a vote and if no party has a majority, they vote again.  If there is still no majority then the presidency goes to the party with the most councilors.  But what if it is still tied?

Well, then it goes to the party with the oldest councilor!  Age before beauty!  I’ve never heard of this before. 

Think of what would happen if other political systems used this.  Back in the 80’s and 90’s the Republicans would never have lost a tie vote in the Senate because Strom Thurmond was so old.  (Actually, I’m not sure if he was still alive then but they did a good job of propping him up.)  Ronald Reagan would have had no fear of an Electoral College tie.  And the Canaanites would have won every tie vote in the ancient world, what with Methuselah on their team.

The election results for departement president are today and I can’t wait.

KVS