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Politics : Support the French! Viva Democracy! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tom Clarke who wrote (1900)	7/17/2003 12:42:55 PM
From: 49thMIMOMander	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 7834

No, the voters reflect the French election system for the President. In the First Round as many candidates as parties, to ensure representation, participation in the presidential debate. However, only in exceptional cases does any candidate win the 50% majority. The two with the highest number of votes then go the second round, election. In times of dissatisfaction,etc, or one president who has served maybe too long, both elections might turn into "protest-elections", people vote against the (usually two) major candidates. However, there is no chance a protest-candidate, LePen,etc can get 50% in the first round, a very slim chance in the second one, as the protests were done in the first round. One risk is that as the second round, in this case, is so obvious, one major candidate plus vs a "populistic kook", very few will vote. This has a theorethical chance of electing a "protest-kook" if, for some reason, the protest-voters maybe get even more active, while general "common sense" voters do the opposite. The major reason for this election system (used by more and more other nations) is to - ensure that the president actually gets more than 50% official support by the voters (in the #1 vs #2 final round) Ref USA, ie. to avoid that more than 50% voted "against" the president - but still give every spectrum of candidates access to the presidential debate and election on an equal platfrom (ref USA and especially campaign finance, access to ballots, etc) just like with any multy-party system the basic ideas are also, as they are for the congressional elections - ensure that there are official, well defined "kook" parties (ref USA where they must exist within the two major parties, in secrete, smoke and mirrors) - avoid that these small extreme parties somewhow manage to get "too much" power (proportionality) - avoid "voter-frustration", if the (two?) major parties year after year after year do not do much more than repeat the same stuff and fight each other (this is where a center party is needed, few have them, but the goal of this century) - and most important, in the long run both voters and politicians, as well as media, learn more and more through the more varied debates