Voting is much more direct in France. It is a 2-turn popular vote with paper ballots, checked against voter ID, with signature on a paper register after casting the ballot. This means there's no in-between like an electoral college with a special meeting to hand the votes, and the ballots are handled very swiftly, under scrutiny, with no room for "shipments" of ballots appearing out of nowhere. AFAIK we don't have a mail-in voting system, except for French nationals in foreign countries.
At worst we have a delegation system making a single person able to cast two votes, one for the voter and one for an absentee. This system is also under heavy scrutiny, needing a request to the local "Mairie" for a delegation, and only the designated person by the absentee can vote for the absentee. That usually means a breach of the vote secrecy from the absentee's perspective, and it involves trust the designated person will vote according to the wish of the absentee.
At 7 PM sharp on election day (local hour) the results were announced.
This is why she conceded: we kinda trust our election system, even if it's imperfect. Since Frenchmen at large (not me) don't have this value of being part of the "checks and balances" on government with no equivalent of the 2A to speak of, voting is our only outlet to effect change. Our representatives don't fear the people, and the people has no issue with not threatening those in power. Violence is pure, unadulterated evil, mkay? Such a great principle... in a utopia. People are basically pacified.
I fear the day a revelation happens in which the people are proven bluntly that their votes never mattered, but I'll gladly welcome it, for I'd rather be told the bitter truth than go on living a honeyed lie.
I saw a video yesterday that was posted here on the board regarding the French election. Perhaps you can better explain what I saw. Someone was opening a plastic bag that contained some sort of folder. Inside the folder was the ballot. The man was speaking in French and my French isn't that good to know exactly what he was saying. The point he was trying to make, however, was that the ballots were marked. Every ballot he took out of the sealed plastic bags had a small tear at the bottom edge of the ballot. Apparently, it indicated that the election was rigged in some fashion, as the expectation was that the ballot should be without any sort of tear. I don't understand why this was significant, but perhaps it means something to you, fren.
I'd like to see that video. I'm interested in what that person had to say.
Regarding what you pieced together from the video.
A ballot needs to be pristine, folded to fit in the envelope, and that can be done with one fold. A tear, a pen mark, a misprint, those all have a high chance of counting as invalid votes. Rigging in this way may be possible, I've seen a ballot on Facebook with printer marks at the bottom, as if it had been cut wrong, but in effect? The place I went to vote in this election had stacks of ballots, one for each candidate (there were 12 IIRC?), and none of my ballots looked like it's been tampered with. Keep in mind, those are paper ballots with only the names of candidates on them. There's little-to-no way a mark such as a "small tear at the bottom" that wasn't noticed by the voter, would be noticed by the public employees counting and the civil onlookers checking the counting during the count. The count needs to be fast to announce the results on time, and too many ballots somehow marked this way would raise suspicions.
There's no intrinsic security on the ballot itself, like I've seen on US ballots. This is done so every ballot is equal, no ballot can be traced back to the voter. The ballots are deposited in large secure voting boxes. Voters come and go as they please at the polling places, there's little room for errors should officials try to stuff the boxes. The number of ballots must match the number of signatures on the record. The data of each polling place is public record and can be easily audited.
We are taught very early as kids how to respect the ballots and the voting process. Highschools use the same 2-turn absolute majority system to elect the class reps, we are explicitly told to only write a name down, to not doodle, to not write-strike-write again, to not dirty the ballot, etc... We are shown all the ballots during the count, and those with errors are mercilessly discarded as invalid. When you recognize your ballot (handwriting) and it's discarded because you messed up, you don't mess up twice.
FYI, two ballots in the same envelope also counts as invalid.
For the record, I checked my ballots in all the elections I voted in to make certain they couldn't be discarded as invalid votes.
As for cheating...never underestimate the abilities of someone determined to cheat. If there's a way to do it, they will find it.
After the election with Trump and Biden, I was talking to someone I know who had worked at the polls many times and she was certain that there was no way to cheat -- and this is probably mostly true. Where the vast majority of cheating occurred was not at the polls, but by mail-in ballot, which is normally not permitted unless you have a very good reason for doing so. However, the rules were changed because of COVID-19, which opened the door to widespread cheating.
What I can't figure out is, why did she concede?
Voting is much more direct in France. It is a 2-turn popular vote with paper ballots, checked against voter ID, with signature on a paper register after casting the ballot. This means there's no in-between like an electoral college with a special meeting to hand the votes, and the ballots are handled very swiftly, under scrutiny, with no room for "shipments" of ballots appearing out of nowhere. AFAIK we don't have a mail-in voting system, except for French nationals in foreign countries.
At worst we have a delegation system making a single person able to cast two votes, one for the voter and one for an absentee. This system is also under heavy scrutiny, needing a request to the local "Mairie" for a delegation, and only the designated person by the absentee can vote for the absentee. That usually means a breach of the vote secrecy from the absentee's perspective, and it involves trust the designated person will vote according to the wish of the absentee.
At 7 PM sharp on election day (local hour) the results were announced.
This is why she conceded: we kinda trust our election system, even if it's imperfect. Since Frenchmen at large (not me) don't have this value of being part of the "checks and balances" on government with no equivalent of the 2A to speak of, voting is our only outlet to effect change. Our representatives don't fear the people, and the people has no issue with not threatening those in power. Violence is pure, unadulterated evil, mkay? Such a great principle... in a utopia. People are basically pacified.
I fear the day a revelation happens in which the people are proven bluntly that their votes never mattered, but I'll gladly welcome it, for I'd rather be told the bitter truth than go on living a honeyed lie.
I saw a video yesterday that was posted here on the board regarding the French election. Perhaps you can better explain what I saw. Someone was opening a plastic bag that contained some sort of folder. Inside the folder was the ballot. The man was speaking in French and my French isn't that good to know exactly what he was saying. The point he was trying to make, however, was that the ballots were marked. Every ballot he took out of the sealed plastic bags had a small tear at the bottom edge of the ballot. Apparently, it indicated that the election was rigged in some fashion, as the expectation was that the ballot should be without any sort of tear. I don't understand why this was significant, but perhaps it means something to you, fren.
I'd like to see that video. I'm interested in what that person had to say.
Regarding what you pieced together from the video.
A ballot needs to be pristine, folded to fit in the envelope, and that can be done with one fold. A tear, a pen mark, a misprint, those all have a high chance of counting as invalid votes. Rigging in this way may be possible, I've seen a ballot on Facebook with printer marks at the bottom, as if it had been cut wrong, but in effect? The place I went to vote in this election had stacks of ballots, one for each candidate (there were 12 IIRC?), and none of my ballots looked like it's been tampered with. Keep in mind, those are paper ballots with only the names of candidates on them. There's little-to-no way a mark such as a "small tear at the bottom" that wasn't noticed by the voter, would be noticed by the public employees counting and the civil onlookers checking the counting during the count. The count needs to be fast to announce the results on time, and too many ballots somehow marked this way would raise suspicions.
There's no intrinsic security on the ballot itself, like I've seen on US ballots. This is done so every ballot is equal, no ballot can be traced back to the voter. The ballots are deposited in large secure voting boxes. Voters come and go as they please at the polling places, there's little room for errors should officials try to stuff the boxes. The number of ballots must match the number of signatures on the record. The data of each polling place is public record and can be easily audited.
We are taught very early as kids how to respect the ballots and the voting process. Highschools use the same 2-turn absolute majority system to elect the class reps, we are explicitly told to only write a name down, to not doodle, to not write-strike-write again, to not dirty the ballot, etc... We are shown all the ballots during the count, and those with errors are mercilessly discarded as invalid. When you recognize your ballot (handwriting) and it's discarded because you messed up, you don't mess up twice.
FYI, two ballots in the same envelope also counts as invalid.
For the record, I checked my ballots in all the elections I voted in to make certain they couldn't be discarded as invalid votes.
You're in luck, fren! I found the video with the spoiled ballots. They were all for Le Pen:
https://greatawakening.win/p/15HbpUFme1/france-elections-the-ballots-for/c/
Let me know what you find out!
As for cheating...never underestimate the abilities of someone determined to cheat. If there's a way to do it, they will find it.
After the election with Trump and Biden, I was talking to someone I know who had worked at the polls many times and she was certain that there was no way to cheat -- and this is probably mostly true. Where the vast majority of cheating occurred was not at the polls, but by mail-in ballot, which is normally not permitted unless you have a very good reason for doing so. However, the rules were changed because of COVID-19, which opened the door to widespread cheating.