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As France’s presidential election approaches, some aspiring candidates say they are still striving to collect the 500 signatures from elected officials required to join the ballot for the first round on April 10. Many an Élysée Palace dream has been dashed when hopefuls have fallen short of that magic number. What is the 500 signatures rule and how does it work? FRANCE 24 explains.
Before turning on the charm to win over voters, a French presidential candidate must first persuade 500 elected officials of the worthiness of his or her bid for France’s highest office and have them sign off on it. Since 1976, every contender for the French presidency must, by law, gather 500 such signatures to see their candidacy validated by France’s panel of so-called sages, the Constitutional Council.
The signatures presented for approval are officially called présentations, but colloquially they are known as parrainages – literally, “Godfatherings” or sponsorships.
The rule is meant to limit the number of candidates on offer at the ballot box and filter out some of the more eccentric bids. Before 1976 would-be candidates only needed 100 elected officials to sign off, but when that put no fewer than 12 names on the presidential ballot in 1974 the bar was raised to 500. And yet that still didn’t stop a record 16 candidates from making the ballot in 2002, with extraordinary results.
For 2022, more than 40 candidates have thrown their hats in the ring – but the considerable challenge of obtaining the 500 required signatures to make each of those bids official is bound to cut the list down to size by March.
Who can sign off on a candidate?
Presidential candidates are required to seek out signatures far and wide. Since 1962, conditions laid out in law to preclude bids that are purely local in scope mean that one candidate’s list…
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Source : france24
