from the Paris-Lyon-Marseille reform to the joint lists, the brand new options of the poll | EUROtoday
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From Marseille (practically 900,000 inhabitants) to Freycenet-la-Cuche (round 100) in Haute-Loire, huge modifications await voters throughout the subsequent municipal elections, March 15 and 22, 2026. Overview of the brand new options.
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The checklist vote applies to municipalities with lower than 1,000 inhabitants
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An further poll in Paris, Lyon and Marseille
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Prisoners now not have entry to postal voting
Small municipalities transfer to joint checklist voting
France has 24,935 municipalities of fewer than 1,000 inhabitants, by which 8.7 million inhabitants stay based on INSEE (in comparison with 58.9 million within the different 10,002 municipalities).
Until 2020, these small municipalities elected their municipal council with a selected voting technique. Candidates may current themselves alone or as a part of an inventory. In the latter case, the voter may “panacher”, that’s to say, cross out names on the poll and exchange them with others, or modify the order of the names. The scores have been calculated for every candidate taken individually, who might be elected in a single or two rounds.
From 2026, these municipalities can be topic, like all others, to the proportional parity checklist vote. Individual purposes are now not licensed and should subsequently seem on an inventory. The voter can’t mix (if he does, the poll is taken into account invalid). Each checklist should provide as many ladies as males distributed alternately.
If an inventory obtains an absolute majority within the first spherical, it’s elected. Otherwise, a second spherical is organized, for the lists which have obtained at the least 10% of the votes, the place the relative majority is sufficient to win. The victorious checklist advantages from a “majority bonus” which supplies him half of the seats on the municipal council. The different seats are distributed proportionally between all competing lists, besides these which obtained lower than 5% of the votes. Once put in, the municipal council elects the mayor, typically the primary title on the checklist that comes first.
Several variations goal to beat the difficulties of recruiting candidates in municipalities with lower than 1,000 inhabitants. So, of their case:
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an inventory is taken into account full and legitimate even when it has one or two candidates lower than the variety of seats to be stuffed. For instance, in a municipality of 400 inhabitants which should elect eleven councilors, an inventory might solely include 9 or ten names.
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If an inventory obtains extra seats than it has candidates, the seats it gained however can’t occupy stay vacant.
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After the election, the municipal councils are deemed full even when two seats stay vacant in comparison with the usual quantity (which is 7 elected for municipalities with lower than 100 inhabitants, 11 elected from 100 to 499 inhabitants, and 15 elected from 500 to 999 inhabitants).
The vote on the reform within the Assembly in April gave rise to tense exchanges. The left supported the textual content, particularly on the grounds of gender equality, whereas the precise and the far proper judged it to be disconnected from the realities of the countryside, and stated they feared that small cities would have problem making use of it.
New Caledonia and French Polynesia should not affected by this reform for the 2026 election, however can be from 2032, with variations.
Two ballots in Paris and Marseille, three in Lyon
Until now, in Paris, Lyon and Marseille (2.1 million voters in complete, based on INSEE), we didn’t vote for the municipal council however for the district councils (or “sectors” bringing collectively a number of districts). The elected officers showing on the high of the victorious lists sat on each the district council and the municipal council, inside which they elected the mayor of the town.
The so-called “PLM” regulation promulgated in August reformed the voting technique in these three cities to deliver it nearer to the overall system. As a outcome, on March 15 and 22, 2026, their voters will take part in a number of elections:
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that of the town’s municipal council, in a single or two rounds;
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that of the district council, in a single or two rounds;
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within the case of Lyon solely, that of the metropolitan council, in a single or two rounds.
The reform supplies that in these three cities, not like the opposite municipalities, the bulk bonus for the checklist that comes first is just not 50% of the seats however 25%. This with a view to “do not crush the opposition”defined the rapporteur of the textual content to the Assembly, Jean-Paul Mattei (MoDem, Pyrénées-Atlantiques), throughout the parliamentary debate.
Under the phrases of the regulation, district mayors will be capable to attend the municipal council and be heard there. “on matters relating to the district”. It additionally supplies for a “coordination body” between the central mayor and the district mayors, and duties the federal government with producing a “report which assesses the possibility of transferring skills from the central town hall to the district town halls”.
According to its promoters, the PLM reform carried by the Macronist camp revitalizes these three elections by establishing a extra direct hyperlink between residents and the municipal council. By validating all the invoice, the Constitutional Council stated it noticed a “objective of general interest”and thought of that with this textual content “the legislator sought to improve the representation of various political sensitivities”.
Critics, for his or her half, worry a disconnection from the central city corridor and the districts, degrading the illustration of residents and the conduct of public affairs. Opponents additionally suspect the presidential camp of getting supported the reform to facilitate the duty of the Les Républicains candidate in Paris, Rachida Dati, who may benefit from a voting technique which limits the affect of different right-wing heavyweights within the capital and personifies the election greater than previously.
No postal voting for prisoners
Some 57,000 incarcerated individuals have the precise to vote. To train it, a prisoner can:
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use an influence of lawyer;
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go to the polling station themselves after having obtained permission to go away;
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vote by mail in sure elections.
In the latter case, supplied for by a 2019 regulation, the inmate is registered on the electoral checklist of the capital of the division the place the jail the place he’s serving his sentence is positioned. This system was applied within the 2019 European elections, however not within the 2020 municipal elections, with the jail administration citing organizational difficulties.
Since the regulation of July 18, 2025, adopted with the votes of the National Rally, the central bloc and the precise, postal voting in jail has been restricted. It stays doable within the case of single-constituency ballots (i.e. organized on a nationwide scale, such because the presidential, European elections or referendums), however is now not doable for native constituency ballots (comparable to legislative and municipal elections).
According to the supporters of this reform, prisoners don’t essentially have a private reference to the territories the place they’re incarcerated, and if they’re registered on the corresponding electoral lists, their votes can distort native or legislative elections, and even tilt the outcome within the municipalities the place they characterize a big a part of the electoral physique.
Left-wing deputies deplored the tightening of prisoners’ proper to vote by mail, recalling that they’d favored this fashion of doing issues throughout the 2022 presidential election. According to the Ministry of Justice, postal voting then represented 93% of the votes in jail and “considerably boosted participation” within the poll, with a charge of 20%, in comparison with 2% in 2017.
https://www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/article/2025/12/14/municipales-2026-de-la-reforme-paris-lyon-marseille-aux-listes-paritaires-les-nouveautes-du-scrutin_6657248_4355770.html