Walking down the road home from the count of the vote last night, I was pleased I went. Voting is important no matter what country you live in. When I arrived, Christiane was standing by the locked box holding Cadrieu's votes in blue envelopes. Once everyone arrived who was there for the "Contrôle", the box was unlocked and the sealed blue envelopes were passed to the end of the line at the table.
With a line of four, one opens the envelopes, the next pulls out and unfolds the ballots, the third reviews the opened vote, and hands it to the fourth-our Mayor-she then announces outloud who the vote was for. The votes are recorded by two separate people, adding even further to the system of checks and balances. I sat through every ballot announced. For a small village like ours, a turnout of 122 in an approximate population of 150 is excellent. In the end, the two candidates with the most votes were incumbent President Nicolas Sarkozy and challenger François Hollande. In fact, each had the same number of votes. The Lot Department went for Hollande, with the rest of France voting 30.41% Sarkozy, 22.75% Hollande, and LePen coming in with 20.71%. Sarkozy and Hollande will be in the run off on Sunday, May 6.
I'm going to miss that May 6 vote. I'll be back in New Orleans dancing to the Neville Brothers at the Jazz and Heritage Festival. It will be interesting to see who will be the President of France upon my return!
I wasn't surprised, given how the village voted in the last presidential election. From the articles on Orange, it sounds like the rest of France was surprised by the LePen votes. Ah, Politics!
Posted by: Laury Bourgeois | April 23, 2012 at 08:13 AM
I'm surprised that Sarkozy did so well in the village. Was everyone surprised about LePen?
Posted by: Evelyn | April 23, 2012 at 08:02 AM