LEGISLATIVE ELECTIONS 2022. The French are called to vote this Sunday, June 12 for the first round of the legislative elections 2022. Will the blank vote still appeal to many voters this Sunday? What does this gesture correspond to, what does the blank vote represent and is it counted in the results? Here are the first responses from this election day.
[Mis à jour le 11 juin 2022 à 09h00] Will the white vote be one of the big “winners” of the first round of the 2022 legislative elections which is being held this Sunday, June 12? The counting of the blank votes, registered in the register and therefore present in the results provided by the Ministry of the Interior, makes it possible to note the progression of the blank vote for several ballots. On April 24, during the second round of the presidential election, 2,228,044 voted blank, which still represented 4.57% of those registered on the electoral lists and more than 6% of voters who had moved in 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!
What are the differences between abstention, blank vote and null vote?
Abstention corresponds to the fact of not going to the polls. Conversely, the white vote consists of going to the polling station but slipping a blank ballot without any name or placing an empty envelope in the ballot box. This gesture is seen as the demonstration of an interest in the political life of the country or the realization of its citizen act, but makes it possible to mark its dissatisfaction vis-à-vis the political offer, which did not convince. Finally, the null vote brings together the torn or annotated ballot papers.
It should be kept in mind that the blank vote is a political choice unlike the invalid vote and abstention which can reflect the inability to go to the polls or be a political act which can mean the rejection of an election more than that of the candidates. Among these three behaviors, only the blank vote is recognized, and this since the law of February 21, 2014, but be careful because if they are correctly counted during the counting, the blank votes are not taken into account in the votes cast and therefore in the election result. They therefore have no real impact on the final result and do not influence the validity or otherwise of the ballot or the proclamation of the results and even less on the election of the deputy in your constituency.