“I prefer not to vote, rather than not to do so in my home town!” On the phone, Véronique (the first name has been changed) fumes. This fiftieth-year-old recounts a small personal drama: when, six years ago, she received a notification from her hometown, in the south-west of France, telling her that she had just been removed from the list electoral. “While my parents vote there, that I also went there for thirty years … Nothing worked,” she says, her voice still vibrating with anger.
This small cleaning of the town hall was not done without reason. If Véronique had been voting for three decades in the city, it had been almost as long since she had moved to settle, after her marriage, in a village 6 km away. But for this resident, it is out of the question to register in her municipality of residence. As a result, for six years, this great faithful of the voting booth no longer votes. “As long as I am not re-registered where I grew up, I do not set foot in a polling station!”, She assures.
Since her 50th birthday, Véronique has therefore been part of a category of French people over whom the major electoral rallies have little influence: the non-registered. According to a recent parliamentary report3 to 5 million people would fall into this category, which is not taken into account in the calculation of abstention.
Invisible, they have their counterpart well listed on the electoral lists: the poorly registered, voters appearing on the electoral lists in a municipality no longer corresponding to their actual place of residence. This other group would represent more than 6 million individuals, out of more than 48 million voters. A figure that is not insignificant when we know that 10 million French people abstained in the last presidential election, in 2017. Many will not go to the polls this Sunday, April 10.
Word of mouth
The profiles of these two categories vary. On the non-registered side, there are people who acquired their majority before 2001, the year from which registration on the electoral lists became compulsory from the age of 18; or adults naturalized French before 2019, the date on which the naturalization procedure was automatically linked to registration on the electoral lists. “Because until now, as strange as it may seem, the two processes were not linked”, explains Ninon Lagarde, coordinator of the association All registered and former actress of the Popular Primary. In 2012, according to a study by INSEE, 35% of French people born abroad (born or not French) were unregistered.
Very specific cases that accompany a more classic phenomenon. “Most of the time, unregistered people have moved, and are removed from the electoral lists after yet another unassigned letter has been returned to town hall”, summarizes Yves Sintomer, professor of political science at the University of Paris 8.
In small towns, as illustrated by the case of Véronique, the phenomenon is often more frequent. “Small villages and towns often keep their electoral register better up to date, specifies Anne Jadot. They are also the ones who are best able to know who has moved and when, because their inhabitants know each other better.” Word of mouth remains one of the best tools for small towns to keep records up to date.
The moving factor
“The reform of automatic registration on the electoral lists has inevitably reduced the number of non-registered people, but paradoxically has increased the proportion of poorly registered people. Where, a few years ago, you would have had non-registered people, you can now have abstainers”, says Anne Jadot, author of one of the first studies on the phenomenon of mis-registration, in 2002. “At the time, I called it ‘those who vote elsewhere’. We then sought to understand why the abstention had been so massive in the first round of the ballot.
During her study, the political scientist quickly notices an unexpected correlation. “The fact of being both well registered and an owner in your municipality of residence meant that you had a 20% greater chance of having voted in the first round”, continues the researcher. What to draw more general lessons: “The move is often a factor of bad registration”. A mis-registration that feeds abstention.
According to a study conducted in 2017 by researchers Céline Braconnier, Baptiste Coulmont and Jean-Yves Dormagen, half of 25-29 year olds are among the poorly registered. A huge figure, which is explained by the successive moves of young people during their studies, or their first jobs. The popular urban categories, often forced to go “from one HLM to another”, as Yann says (the first name has been changed), 30 years old, are also concerned.
This citizen from Occitania was thus removed from his city in the inner suburbs of Paris after yet another move. “Without any explanation, one day, I realized that I was absent from the electoral lists, he recalls. I forgot to re-register on the lists in the meantime and I will not be able to vote at the presidential election. I am a little disgusted, I would have liked my voice to count.”
A political effect
For Yves Sintomer, the absence of these non-voters could have consequences on the ballot, by disfavoring certain political offers. “By extrapolating their profile, we can think that candidacies like those of Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Marine Le Pen, who appeal to the working classes, are penalized by this lack”, he explains.
An analysis to be nuanced when, Anne Jadot reminds us, the CSP+ socio-professional categories, which are also quick to move, are also likely to have poorly registered people. “But these categories of the population have more of a power of attorney reflex, unlike popular strata who feel less integrated into the current political offer”, continues the political scientist. According to France Inter, more than a million proxies have been made this year, according to a last count, made on Tuesday April 5.
Several developments have taken place in recent years to remedy these absences. Compulsory registration reforms implemented in 2001 and 2019 aimed to limit non-registration, as did bringing the deadline for voter registration – March 4 this year – closer to the date of the poll.
“These reforms are not everything. Take the growing proportion of non-registered people in Saint-Denis, in the Paris region. Forty years ago, this city with a high proportion of working classes voted more than the rest of France. , it is no more difficult to register on the electoral lists today, on the contrary”, notes Yves Sintomer. For the researcher, the problem of non-registrants and mis-registrants is less administrative than political. “We can improve the thermometer, but if we want to fix the problem, we have to deal with it at the root.”