Its promoters see it as a way to inflate participation, among other benefits. “We need to digitize our democracy, by instituting an electronic vote which will widen participation, reduce the costs of elections and modernize the image of politics”, estimated himself the candidate Macron in 2017. But this type of ballot distance is still not topical in France.
On Sunday, for the first round of the presidential election, the 48.7 million registered voters will have no other option than to go to a polling station (except those who have given power of attorney to a relative). they want to cast their vote. Only French people residing abroad have the possibility of voting by Internet during the legislative elections and those of the councilors of French people living abroad.
Several reasons explain this French reluctance, while electronic voting is already widespread in Estonia and experienced in other countries, such as Switzerland. First of all, the fear of computer fraud or hijacking. “Postal voting is already very complicated to set up, but on the Internet it would be even worse. A bug would be enough to change the outcome of the vote and it would be very difficult to realize it ”, warned in November 2020 the computer scientist Chantal Enguehard, interviewed by Le Parisien.
The fear of pressure on the voter
Another argument put forward by the detractors of electronic voting: it would raise the hypothesis of pressures emitted on the voter. From home, he could be encouraged by a relative to vote for such and such a candidate. “Only the voting booth, an essential conquest of republican democracy, has made it possible to guarantee that voters are free and equal citizens, free to keep their vote secret”, justified at the end of 2020 the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin. “Electronic voting violates the principle of the freedom to vote. We can no longer guarantee it when we are not alone in the voting booth, ”approved last year François Pellegrini, professor of computer science at the University of Bordeaux.
Implementing electronic voting could not – in any case – be decided with a snap of the fingers, since the law would have to be changed. An intermediate solution could be postal voting, that is to say, sending your ballot by La Poste from home. This possibility existed in France from 1946 to 1975, but was then prohibited due to the risk of fraud. A bill aimed at making it “a complementary alternative that citizens who wish to do so can take advantage of” was tabled on September 21, 2021. No progress to date.
Find from Sunday, from 8 p.m., the results of the presidential 2022.