Regional 2015: the electoral roll open again – Le Figaro

The parliamentarians decided a derogation until September 30th for registration on the electoral lists for the regional elections in December. A first under the Fifth Republic.

For exceptional date exceptional decision. While the regional elections will be held on 6 and 13 December, MEPs decided in early July to grant a derogation regarding registration on the electoral lists. Usually, could go to the polls, only those who carried out their registration on the electoral rolls before December 31 of the previous year.

However, given the unusually late date of the vote in regional elections ever higher rate of abstentions and complexity of the registration process, parliamentarians decided a derogation until September 30th for non members. So if you have just turned 18 or have moved from 1 January 2015 for a reason other than professional mobility, you still have fifty days to complete your registration.

Before this decision, the next regional were organized in relation to the electoral list endorsed at 1 March 2015, itself based on registrations filed before December 31, 2014. Exit therefore the major new and people who relocated during the year.

A procedure and inadequate electoral calendar

The application of this derogation is a response to the inadequacy of the electoral timetable and the registration process. Residential mobility of voters is concerned. A report dated 2014 the MP for Seine-Saint-Denis Elisabeth Pochon and MP Ardennes Jean-Luc Warsmann put forward the phenomenon of ill-registration affecting France. Building on the work of researchers, the report highlighted that “the weight of the calendar” election became “in determining the extent of the evil-registration”.

In 2012, about 46 million voters on the lists, the researchers estimated 6.5 million the number of voters considered ill-enrolled. A significant share mainly due to residential mobility phenomenon: 66% of malaise were enrolled since they lived in another town, another department or another region. Not easy then to exercise their right to vote so far from its common registration. Moreover, this phenomenon of evil-registration result more of “a low level of information or a tendency to procrastinate facing a misidentified procedure” as an ideological rejection of the vote.

A derogation unprecedented

The rapporteurs consider it essential to ease the electoral calendar and thus propose to reduce the delay to “45 days before the ballot for all elections” or even 30 days to Elisabeth Pochon. Should the exception could become the rule in future years, the fact remains that the deadline for registration is unprecedented under the Fifth Republic. Never, the registration date had been postponed for a year-end poll. Even during the presidential elections of 1965 which saw the re-election of General de Gaulle, the scheduled elections late in the year – the second round is being held a December 19 – did not intervene in the same context of political defiance.