Courrier Expat: What are the voting procedures for French nationals living abroad in the legislative elections?
Sebastien Jaunet (Deputy Director of French Administration at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs): In order to take into account the specificities of the election of deputies by French nationals living abroad, four voting methods have been provided for by the legislator:
- Voting at the ballot box in person.
- Proxy voting.
- Postal voting in a sealed envelope, for voters who have indicated this choice before March 31st.
- Voting by electronic correspondence, commonly known as “voting by Internet”, open to voters who have provided an email address and a mobile phone number when registering in the register of French nationals living outside France. Electronic voting was possible from 27 May to 1is June.
Many French people living abroad have encountered problems with electronic voting. Can you tell us more?
Caroline Monvoisin (Director of the Internet Voting Project at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs): A problem has arisen with the sender address used by the voting system to send, in particular, emails containing confirmation codes to voters (codes enabling them to confirm their choice of candidate and vote definitively). The sending was blocked by the Yahoo and AOL providers, because assimilated to spam emails.
The teams from the Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs and its service providers have done everything to correct them. A technical solution has been identified and implemented. Sending emails to Yahoo and AOL addresses has been restored. All voters concerned were invited to restart the Internet voting procedure, if they so wished, and informed voters immediately voted. Furthermore, the 1is June, the voting portal was unavailable for five hours before being restored.
In all, 250,566 voters voted by Internet, i.e. 17.34% of the world list and 21.62% of the list of those who had provided a mobile phone number and an e-mail address on the French Register of abroad or at their consulate. In the May 2021 consular elections, 176,700 voters voted online.
Can you tell us about the 11 French constituencies around the world?
Sebastien Jaunet : Following the constitutional law of 23 July 2008 on the modernization of the institutions of the Ve Republic, 11 legislative constituencies were created abroad, to allow French people living outside France to elect 11 deputies to the National Assembly (until that date, French people living outside France were only represented in the Senate). These eleven deputies representing the French living outside France are elected according to the same procedures as the deputies elected on French territory, by uninominal majority ballot in two rounds. They were first elected in the 2012 legislative elections.
The total number of constituencies is established according to the number of French people residing outside France, and registered in the register of French people living outside France. A decree published each year (the population decree) indicates the number of French people registered in this register, for each of the constituencies. These 11 constituencies correspond to different geographical areas, which cover all the countries in order to ensure the representation of all of our nationals living abroad.
These 11 constituencies include between 89,012 registered French people, for constituency 2 (South America and the Caribbean), and 231,328 registered, for constituency 1 (United States and Canada). These data are updated annually.