[EL] French vote-counting dispute

[Rob Richie]

I'll confirm this with a French student we have as an intern this year, but
I would think this would be resolved entirely within the party organization.

The United States is the only nation in which the government gets involved
in administering party nomination processes - -e.g, no other nation pays
for party primaries as far as I know. When the French socialist party
experimented with a national primary to pick Hollande as its nominee, for
example, it was administered entirely by the party --- see two writeups of
that primary here:

http://www.fairvote.org/guide-to-french-primary
http://www.fairvote.org/mr-normal-francois-hollande-to-face-french-president-sarkozy

So the way to think about this would be something analagous to the AARP or
NRA having a vote of its members and a dispute over its outcome. That
organization obviously would want to resolve the dispute carefully and
fairly, but it wouldn't rely on government processes to do so unless one
side took it to court over something like an interpretation of the
organization's bylaws.

Rob

On Mon, Nov 19, 2012 at 8:32 AM, Foley, Edward <foley.33 at osu.edu> wrote:

>  The media is reporting this morning that France’s conservative
> opposition party has become mired in a vote-counting dispute over the
> selection of the party’s new leader.  ****
>
> ** **
>
> What I’m able to gather is that the “electorate” is rather small: about
> 300,000 party members entitled to vote (of whom only about 60% cast
> ballots), with the current count separating the two candidates by about 200
> votes or so.  Both sides apparently claim “irregularities” with some news
> stories referring  to allegations of “fraud”.  ****
>
> ** **
>
> Most interestingly (from my perspective), there is apparently a
> “commission” with jurisdiction to supervise the vote-counting and resolve
> the dispute.  Some news stories describe the commission as “independent,”
> but this Wall Street Journal report describes it as a “party commission”:
> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323353204578128571621869016.html
> ****
>
> ** **
>
> I’m curious to learn more about the status and composition of this
> commission—and whether this dispute will serve as a test of the ability to
> a commission to handle a dispute of this nature.  (For several years now, I
> have thought that France might be the most interesting and relevant
> comparison to the United States in terms of institutions and procedures to
> handle vote-counting disputes, because it has more of a presidential system
> than the English-speaking parliamentary systems with which the U.S. is
> often compared—Canada, Australia, Britain, etc.)****
>
> ** **
>
> Do any members of this listserv have particular knowledge of French
> election law and could address the nature of the commission that has
> jurisdiction over this particular intra-party electoral dispute? ****
>
> ** **
>
> Thanks, Ned****
>
> ** **
>
> ** **
>
> Edward B. Foley****
>
> Director, *Election Law @ Moritz*****
>
> Chief Justice Thomas J. Moyer Professor for the Administration of Justice
> and the Rule of Law****
>
> ** **
>
> The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law****
>
> (614) 292-4288; foley.33 at osu.edu****
>
> Website: www.electionlaw.osu.edu ****
>
> ** **
>
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> Law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
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>



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