French voters who signed up for an online People’s Primary will begin choosing their preferred presidential candidate in four days of voting starting Thursday via “majority judgement”, a voting system touted as a solution to mounting disillusion with the electoral process.
The Primaire Populaire (People’s Primary) is a citizens’ initiative with an ambitious objective: to unite France’s weak and divided leftist parties behind a single candidate for the April presidential elections. In the process, it will be testing a novel voting method designed to counter mounting voter apathy and disenchantment with an electoral system that leaves many voters feeling left out.
Nearly half a million people registered for the primary, surpassing the organisers’ own expectations. They will choose between seven candidates in a four-day online primary that runs from Thursday morning and wraps up at 5pm on Sunday.
Of those seven only one prominent candidate, Socialist former justice minister Christiane Taubira, is willingly taking part, along with environmental activist Anna Agueb-Porterie, public health expert Charlotte Marchandise and MEP Philippe Larrouturou. But the three other heavyweights – leftist firebrand Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Socialist Party candidate Anne Hidalgo and the Greens’ Yannick Jadot – have all said they will ignore the outcome of the primary, making its first objective – to unite the left – virtually unattainable.
Instead, the primary’s experimental nature could prove to be its most lasting contribution: bypassing the country’s fragmented and discredited political parties and introducing a new electoral system designed to tackle voter abstention and build consensus around candidates with the best shot at winning.
Source : france24
