I have been a Frenchman from Quebec for 12 years and I am called to the presidential polls for the third time after 2012 and 2017. The first two, I lived in Montreal and had access to a common polling station, Stanislas College, which we were already many to denounce in view of a failing consular organization, which had given more prominence to television reports (especially in 2017) than to citizens coming to vote as the endless queue was unbearable, probably laughable for outside observers. Between three and five hours in line in freezing cold to put the ballot in the ballot box, hundreds of French people having given up their right to vote in the face of such a cacophony.
If the proverb says that we learn from our mistakes, it would seem that this was not the case yesterday for the French Consulate in view of the images of the Palais des Congrès de Montréal (new common place of vote) where the crowd was also so dense that many people turned around in front of this mob organized by our government. Admittedly, the Palais des Congrès is bigger than Stanislas, but the organization has remained the same: to have tens of thousands of people vote in the same place in a single day. Ridiculous. What cool the ardor of the most militant, the most citizens, not to mention the most vulnerable people, such as the elderly who have to stand for hours waiting. Nonsense in a digital age for a country that (too) proudly claims to be among the seven most “developed” countries in the world.
Worse in the region
But wait for more. Since September, I have moved to Alma, in Lac-Saint-Jean, in the territory of Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean, of which the large merged city of Saguenay (Jonquière-Chicoutimi-La Baie) counts, according to the census, 299,000 inhabitants (2016) for a total of 585 French people. Few souls, you will tell me. But does the number make these French citizens second class voters? As I learned that in the 2017 elections these French people could go and vote in Chicoutimi (40 minutes by car from Alma for 45 km), I received in my mailbox last Monday my affiliation to the polling station in…Quebec!
In other words, no polling station was set up for all residents living north of Quebec City in la belle province. This new defection from the consulate therefore represents in my case a completely different journey to go to the polls: 240 km one way and 240 km return to vote in the first round, the same thing for the second round, i.e. a total of 960 km to deposit my two ballots in the ballot box. At $1.72 per liter of gas on Saturday morning at the pump, it’s a vote that is starting to get expensive (about $165 just in gas) not to mention the risks on the road since you have to go return during the day so as not to pay an additional hotel night.
How is it possible to come to this? Can we imagine saying to any Frenchwoman or any Frenchman living in France that he must travel from Grenoble to Nîmes to vote, twice in a row in 15 days? Who would? How would citizens perceive this? What is the furthest polling station for any voter in France? 15km? 20km? 30 km considering the most remote countryside?
Seeing this situation, I immediately thought of making a power of attorney to friends who live in Quebec. But do you know what? To make a power of attorney, it must be validated in a consulate, that is to say in Quebec or Montreal! The height of discouragement and an aging bureaucracy, unsuitable, discriminatory too. How in 2022 not be able to have official documents electronically validated? Any notary during the pandemic could carry out deeds of sale of houses without anyone moving. And France is unable to have such a power of attorney validated elsewhere than in a consulate? Or better still organize a remote electronic vote? I’m coming to think it’s an April hoax.
Voting is a right
To think about it more closely, if France is not able to meet these technological challenges or if it does not have the will to make them available to its citizens outside its borders, it is to be wondered what is the place of French people living abroad who nevertheless have the same identity card. Or if, as she claims, she is really one of the countries that believe themselves to be the most advanced or the richest. Because the argument of the cost of setting up a polling station in Chicoutimi should not be an excuse at the time of expression at the ballot box.
In the end, the most serious thing is that this lack of consideration vis-à-vis French women and men outside the borders sounds like a call for abstention, discouragement, even theft of the right to vote. Because that’s how I feel since I received my affiliation in Quebec, I have the impression that I was robbed of my right to vote, I was discouraged from going to vote. I didn’t make the trip because I didn’t feel the courage to do so much driving yesterday. And probably I will have the same feeling in 15 days.
I find this scandalous and firmly denounce it on behalf of all my fellow citizens living here in Quebec. We are not second-class citizens, we have the same right as any other French person, and the government in place has not made available to us the possibility of our political opinions, whereas the debate of the last few days is mainly about on the question of the abstention rate. And without partisanship, it is still to believe that it suits the outgoing candidate, current representative of all French men and women.
And I’m not talking about my religious friends, many of whom Saturday is Shabbat (they won’t vote either) whose Hebrew meaning means… “abstention”. Funny coincidence, right?