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Sunday, May 6, 2012

I voted in France






Today I had another one of those hallmark moments. I voted in the French presidential elections.

How to vote in France:
1) go to the town hall in the city you're living in by December 31 so you can vote in the following year.
2) Take your French identification card.
3) Take two bills that prove you live at your current address.
4) Take your French birth certificate. This document is issued to you on the date you are naturalized, or re-born in France. So April 15, 2011 is my French birthday.

About a week before election day you receive an electoral card and an official summons to come participate in the polling. It tells you the official time to show up and the address you should go to. Mine turned out to be a nursery school not far from my apartment.

As expected, the process is rather complicated. I was actually dreading it since I had no idea how to go about doing it. Once in a while I have these experiences in France where my instincts fail completely. I freeze. For example, arriving somewhere where there is a group of people you don't know. Who should I kiss? How many times? How about handshakes? Can I get by without doing this? What about tu or vous? Do I throw in a Monsieur or a Madame for good measure. It's just a Hail Mary pass.

Thus, I arrived at the school and saw two French soldiers guarding the entrance. I timidly told them I needed to vote, showed them my documents, and they promptly opened the door. One hurdle jumped. I was actually fearing a reation to my very Unfrench name. Anti-immigration sentiment has been on the rise here in the last few weeks, in particular naturalizing and giving the right to vote to foreigners. Although friends assure me the wrath is against poor, dark skinned, muslims I cannot help but feel affected by it. Next, I immediately saw a table with two women. One was checking id's, the other took my electoral card and summons. The first one cracked a joke about my surname. "Oh, my tailor is rich". It had been repeated to me so many times I could hardly manage a smile. This was the first sentence learnt in every Beginning English class for at least thirty years. Ha ha! Anyway, laughter subsiding, the ladies gave me number 136, presumably that number of people who had voted before me. I had gone to the polls very early in the morning to avoid crowds.

Progress was made. I was then ushered into the second room where I was given two small pieces of paper on which one of the candidate's name was written and a motley grey envelope that I thought would disintegrate in my hand. How could paper be thinner? Waiting in line for one of the isolation booths I observed the people around me. Everyone oddly seemed to be quite old. Was it because all the young people were still sleeping off their hangovers from Saturday night frenzies? I entered the booth where all I had to do was close the curtain, take one of the small pieces of paper, stuff it into the envelop and seal it. That's all! I can just imagine how a Frenchman might be baffled by those hole-punching voting machines we use in America, also the varieties of issues, propositions and levies we vote on.

Now it's almost over. Finally, I was motioned into a third area, a large room where an elderly man in a blue suit sat at a table beneath a huge French flag. On his lapel he wore a red and blue pin. I wondered if it was a legion of honor for being a war veteran. He held my identity card and read my name out loud phonetically as if it were as French as Pierre Dupont. "Monsieur, avez-vous fait votre choix pour la France?" (Have you made your choice for France?). I uttered a reverent "oui, monsieur", he opened up a huge ballot box, and I inserted my envelope. Afterwards, he stamped and signed my electoral card and summons. I also had to sign my name on a long scroll by number 136. Voilà. Mission accomplished.

Tonight at promptly 6 pm the officials will open that box, count the votes by tens, make an exact tally, report their results to Paris, and by 8 pm the winner will be announced live on national television. Presumably the left will return to power after twenty years. I must explain that it has been officially prohibited in France to talk about the elections since Friday night. Trying to influence someone's vote in any way is considered a crime. So here there are no robot calls, tv spots, or even flyers. Hence the guards and the absolute silence at the polls. This is very much respected in France too. No one has dared to talk to me about the elections. Only one person asked me to vote for one particular candidate, and he was actually Polish.

So much for the pomp and circumstance in France on election day. Also quite a bit of bureaucracy but that is par for the course.

Copyright 2012 Merquiades