It’s a small penitentiary revolution. More than 13,000 prisoners are registered to vote in the presidential election within the prisons themselves, a first for this type of ballot, according to the Ministry of Justice. According to figures communicated by the Chancellery, 13,672 detainees – out of a total of more than 70,000 prisoners on 1 March – opted for this postal vote in prison, before the election.
Voting operations are organized all week until Saturday in some of the 188 French prison establishments. The ballots will then be sent to the Ministry of Justice, in the 1st arrondissement of Paris, where they will be counted in this single office. Postal voting in a sealed envelope, using the same system, was tested for the first time during the European elections in May 2019.
During this election, 5,184 prisoners had been admitted to vote by post, ie 10% of the eligible prison population at the time, and 4,413 had actually voted. The following year, for the municipal elections of March 2020, prisoners were unable to vote in prison, the prison administration then citing “organizational difficulties” due to the local nature of the ballot.
Postal voting in prison had been made permanent on the occasion of the departmental and regional elections of 2021. The votes of detainees were integrated into the municipality of their place of incarceration. A law had also made it systematic to register on the electoral lists upon entering detention. In 2021, 5,895 detainees were registered on an electoral list. They were 3,607 a year earlier.
2% of the prison population voted in the 2017 presidential election
Some 4,000 detainees had voted in regional and departmental elections within their prison establishments. Before this postal vote was introduced, only two possibilities were offered to detainees to exercise their right: to obtain an exit permit to go to the polls or to find a representative registered in the same municipality.
These two methods, permitted since 1994, are very difficult to implement and have never resulted in significant participation rates. About 2% of the prison population thus voted during the 2017 presidential election. Prisoners continue to opt for these two methods: 768 prisoners asked to vote via a power of attorney and 1,314 applied for release the elections of April 10 and 24.
For the legislative elections next June, postal voting will be decentralized. The ballots will be sent by the head of the establishment to the main town of the department of the establishment on polling day in order to be counted there.