LEGISLATIVE ELECTIONS 2022. Will the blank vote be an option for many French voters this Sunday, June 19 during the second round of the 2022 legislative elections? Here is everything you need to know about the blank vote in the French elections.
[Mis à jour le 19 juin 2022 à 16h55] Please note, the counting of blank votes does not mean that they are really taken into account in the results of the French elections, whether for the presidential election or the legislative elections. The law of February 21, 2014 was only a first step towards the recognition of the blank vote and since then the project has been at a standstill. According to the text, the current “recognition” of the blank vote simply implies that “blank ballots are counted separately and attached to the minutes.” They are “specially mentioned in the results of the polls” but they do not appear among the votes cast. The taking into account of the blank vote is in reality only a facade because if it is presented as a recognized political choice, the blank vote therefore has no weight on the outcome of the ballot.
Is the hope of a reform to take into account the blank vote still allowed? Remember, shortly after the Yellow Vests crisis, Emmanuel Macron opened the door, integrating the subject into the great national debate. Neither the actual counting of the white vote nor the famous RIC, the citizens’ initiative referendum, was finally retained at the end of the debates, on the contrary of a significant proportional share in the legislative elections or the drop in the number of parliamentarians. 577 deputies will be elected at the end of this second round of legislative elections, as in 2017, meaning that a movement must win 289 seats to obtain an absolute majority in the National Assembly
Unlike the nominative ballots of each candidate, the blank ballots are not officially provided by the polling stations. Thus, voters who wish to use them must bring them with them. Article 1 of the 2014 law provides that “an envelope containing no ballot is assimilated to a blank ballot.” Furthermore, Article L.49 of the Electoral Code stipulates that “the distribution of blank ballots by individuals is prohibited on polling day.”
The polling stations opened again at 8 a.m. this Sunday, June 19, 2022 everywhere in France for the 2nd round of the legislative elections. And if many candidates will be feverishly awaiting the results this Sunday evening, the white vote could also be one of the big “winners” of this election. For several years and ballot after ballot, the progression of the blank vote has been evident in France. Now registered in the register and therefore present in the results provided by the Ministry of the Interior, blank votes are growing rapidly. On June 12, 2022, during the first round of these legislative elections, 360,844 blank votes were counted, i.e. 0.74% of registered voters and 1.55% of voters.
Is the taking into account of the blank vote planned?
The question of the counting of blank votes comes up regularly in political themes as the elections approach. in the election results. After many years of discussions without results, a step was taken in 2021. While neither the government nor the French institutions have seriously addressed the issue, the rate of abstention, which continues to rise at each ballot, calls into question cause the legitimacy of elected political figures. A February 2021 bill notes that through abstention “the people mean they no longer have the voice to revolt democratically, nor the power sufficient to fundamentally change the course of our history.”
This is a first but France is still far from the effective recognition of the blank vote. The bill presented in 2021, however, considered the recognition of the blank vote as “urgent and imperative”. The law of February 21, 2014 by proposing in its article 1 that the blank votes “enter into account for the determination of the votes cast during the first and second round”. The February 2021 bill goes further and suggests that new electoral rules be instituted “in the event of not obtaining an absolute majority”. However, the bill was not adopted and is still at the proposal stage.
What are the latest scores for the white vote in the elections in France?
On 24th April last, during the second round of the presidential election, 2,228,044 voted blank, which nevertheless represented 4.57% of those registered on the electoral lists and more than 6% of voters who voted moved to polling stations. In 2017, during the last legislative elections, 357,018 voters did the same in the first round, i.e. 1.54% of voters, a figure which jumped in the second round with nearly 1.4 million blank votes, i.e. 6.93% voters! Please note that a vote must meet many criteria to be classified as such.
In 2017, there were many blank and invalid votes in the legislative elections which followed Emmanuel Macron’s first election as President of the Republic by a few weeks. The blank and invalid votes as counted then had represented 2% of the ballots cast in the ballot box in the first round but nearly 10% in the second round two weeks later, representing 9.87% of the votes, going from 513,000 to nearly 2 million in the second round. All while abstention had also skyrocketed between the two rounds.