Some 6% of French people are not yet registered on the electoral lists. “And this is a real concern,” Prime Minister Jean Castex said on Tuesday during the government question session in the National Assembly.
According to figures from INSEE, 47.9 million voters are indeed registered on the electoral lists (as of May 24, 2021, excluding New Caledonia), or 94% of French people of voting age. But among them, there are people who are incorrectly registered, in particular due to moving.
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Faced with these figures, the Prime Minister announced on Tuesday the deployment of a major campaign to encourage the French to register. In particular, he hopes to “mobilize artists” and “relay it on social networks”. Jean Castex also mentioned the creation of a “dedicated site called elections.interieur.gouv.fr” and which has already received “600,000 connections”. “We have also facilitated the vote by digitizing the proxy procedures,” he argued in response to an inquiry from the president of the Insoumis group, Mathilde Panot.
Registration possible until the beginning of March
The deadline for registering on the electoral lists is approaching: it is set for March 4 in town hall and March 2 on the internet, about five weeks before the first round of the presidential election, on April 10. A date that the French have trouble remembering. According to the latest BVA poll of February 11, only 43% of French people are able to give the date of the first round.
> Read also: How to register on the electoral lists?
Disaffection or thoughtlessness? This same survey specifies in any case that only 69% of those registered on the electoral lists are interested in the election, a drop of 4 points in two weeks. The government will therefore have to seriously speed up information around the presidential election.
Already in early January, Jean-Luc Mélenchon (LFI) alerted to the problem of registration on the electoral lists and in particular with the poorly registered. Rightly so: an unregistered voter always rhymes with abstention, and a potentially unregistered one too. Already because they are often unaware that they are not registered in the right place, do not necessarily make a power of attorney and even less travel to their old polling station when it is far from home.
The candidates have reason to fear the specter of abstention, while the polls give some neck and neck to reach the second round against the outgoing president by still declared: Valérie Pécresse (LR), Eric Zemmour (Reconquest!) and Marine Le Pen (RN). In 2017, abstention during the presidential election rose to 22.23% on April 23 (first round) and 25.44% on May 7 (second round), i.e. more than one in four French voters.
For the government, the goal is also to avoid high abstention after the high rate noted in the regional elections of June 2021. Even if some suspect it of betting on it. “You are afraid of the people who vote”, in particular launched Tuesday at the National Assembly the deputy of Val-de-Marne Mathilde Panot, considering that “Emmanuel Macron’s nightmare has a name, democracy” because, in the voting booth, “the voice of the richest man in France Bernard Arnault is equivalent to that of Jojo the yellow vest”.