the fragile query of prisoner voting | EUROtoday

Power of lawyer, go away of absence or postal vote: on paper, the 57,000 prisoners who’ve the precise to vote (out of a complete of round 85,000 together with foreigners, minors and convicts stripped of their civil rights) have a spread of means to take part within the elections. But in actuality, exercising the precise to vote stays sophisticated for incarcerated individuals. In specific for the municipal elections of March 15 and 22, 2026, the place postal voting won’t be accessible to them resulting from a legislative reversal.

To perceive this, we have now to return to 2019. At that point, the “law relating to engagement in local life and proximity to public action” granted prisoners the potential for voting by mail. It offers for his or her registration on the electoral lists of the capital of the division the place their jail is positioned. Strictly talking, they don’t vote by submit, however by way of a poll field put in within the jail after which transmitted to a polling station within the capital.

According to the Ministry of Justice, 93% of prisoners who voted within the 2022 presidential election selected this methodology, which triggered the participation charge in jail to “take off” to twenty%, in comparison with 2% in 2017.

However, as early as 2019, the Council of State had warned in regards to the system resulting in registering prisoners within the capital of the division the place the jail is positioned. The excessive court docket emphasised the truth that their votes might have a “significant quantitative impact” in native elections, the place the full variety of voters is way smaller than for a nationwide election, despite the fact that they don’t have any private ties to the municipality. “In no less than six capital municipalities (Tulle, Bar-le-Duc, Arras, Melun, Evry-Courcouronnes and Basse-Terre), the variety of voters [détenus] prone to be registered underneath the brand new system [le vote par correspondance] will exceed 5% » of the voters, reported the Council of State. Enough to considerably affect the end result of the election.

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