Last week our voting papers arrived in the door and we celebrated that we now were becoming real French people. We knew, we really knew, that these papers entitled us to vote in local and European elections but then, just days after our papers had arrived we discovered we were in the middle of a regional election. As this was not local or European and the papers had just come in in time we assumed that this must be an election we were entitled to vote in.
Now elections in France are incredibly low key, no fly posting,no people in vans with loudspeakers, no constant bombardment on papers and tele. All we saw was outside the Mairie of each village are erected 6 or 7 large billboards and on each one is pased a poster of the candidate, of identical size and extremely restrained wording. With extreme difficulty we managed to discover roughly what each candidate stood for. In our area there were Greens, Communists, The Far Left, The (just) Left, The Right, and then the National Front, roughly Right of Hitler.Each poster represented two people, a man and a woman, who would be voted in on the same ticket.
We made our decision and on Sunday morning (yes Sunday, no schools
were closed) made our way down to the Foyer Rurale to vote.
We were greeted at the door by a couple who checked our passports and our papers and checked our names on a list. On their table were seven flimsies, one for each candidate, miniature versions of the posters and we were handed small brown envelopes and directed towards a curtined booth. I began to twig how this worked but as I came from the land of Proportional Representation decided to check. “Do we put just one paper in the envelope Monsieur ?” He looked up at me sharply. “It is my first time voting here Monsieur” I explained. Then he was gracious “Just one” he said. So we went into the cubicle, discarded six of the flimsies in the bin provided, slipped one into the envelope and proceeded towards the ballot box, large and perspex and presided over by the mayor where I could see Síle in conversation with the lady checker. It appeared that we not allowed to vote in this election after all. Everyone was very gracious. We were asked to return our little envelopes to the door people. There we were
greeted with real contrition. Monsieur looked into my eyes and said
“Excusez Nous s’il vous plait”. This made us feel a lot less idiotic. However at the end of the day we did ourselves no harm at all. We impressed the locals with our citizenship zeal and next time, when we will be allowed to vote we will know the ropes.