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Post by Deleted on Mar 24, 2014 19:53:53 GMT
Probably in most of our countries, there are laws (albeit probably not always correctly applied) regarding protection from all of the usual sorts of discrimination -- race, religion, gender, sexual orientation...
However, today I was surprised to discover a new form of discrimination in France. Yesterday we had our municipal elections, which are in two rounds if nobody gets more than 50% of the vote in the first round. Well, in one village in France, there was a tie -- the two candidates had exactly the same number of votes, so there has to be a second round. On the news they explained that in the very unlikely event that there is a tie in the second round, the oldest list of candidates is designated the winner. I personally find this to be completely outrageous, even though I probably would have accepted the idea of the youngest list of candidates being the winner.
Actually, ageism is indeed another common form of discrimination, particularly on the job market. But while young people should not get automatic priority over older people, I absolutely do not believe that old people are automatically more qualified for either jobs or political function.
Has anybody else here encountered any other unusual forms of discrimination?
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Post by Deleted on Mar 24, 2014 20:38:22 GMT
That's a very interesting twist, Kerouac. In a blind test, I would probably favour the older candidate, although it's a bit like a pig in a poke. Perhaps it's because I come from a political culture (British Columbia, Canada) where there are very few seasoned politicians and we always elect newbies in the hope of some correction. They spend a term or two in office, fumbling and learning the ropes, then they're either accused of some malfeasance or corruption and resign, or they're turfed out by an electorate baying for new blood because things are still screwed up. Older politicians can be jaded, corrupt, or just plain tired; younger politicians can be overeager, clumsy and personally ambitious. I'd hope for some elder's wisdom, but you might just get some old fool nodding off. Youthful energy can turn out to just so much hot air, with the same old business. I don't have any answers.
Can Americans run for office in France? Maybe you should give it a try.
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Post by lagatta on Mar 25, 2014 2:03:07 GMT
Kerouac is French. Believe he's a dual citizen.
Ageism goes both ways. I'm well aware of the problems of youth, but I'm having terrible problems as an older worker. We can't get a proper pension until 65, and even then, I wouldn't have enough to live on without sidelines.
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Post by bjd on Mar 25, 2014 7:45:02 GMT
It's difficult -- our mayor is 36 and a total moron, but was basically put into office by the previous major who was there for 18 years (before he was elected mayor of Toulouse). He will be re-elected next Sunday -- same old, same old.
I object to the French system: even if the "winner" gets 50.1% of the vote, he or she gets half the seats on the municipal council, plus the same percentage of the remaining seats. In our case, with 33 seats (for a population of less than 13,000!), it is a permanent situation of 6 opposition members and the rest for the winning party. It is not a reflection of political opinion. At least we didn't have a Front National candidate here though.
And I believe there are some villages in parts of France where there were Brits running for local office. Some small places have high British expat populations. Members of the EU can vote in local elections after 5 years of residency, even if they don't have French citizenship.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 25, 2014 10:29:19 GMT
Oh, there are plenty of EU citizens running for municipal council positions. Even the Front National, which opposes voting by foreigners -- even EU nationals -- had 80 candidates across the country with EU citizenship, including 2 Romanians and a Bulgarian.
Meanwhile I heard on the news this morning that there was not one but actually two towns that had a tie vote in the first round.
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Post by patricklondon on Mar 25, 2014 13:06:08 GMT
That is a bit weird. But then, the "first past the post" system in the UK tends to mean local authority wards end up electing the same party all the time, hence in a great many areas it tends to mean the local council is permanently dominated by the same party (though, granted, we are voting on individual candidates rather than a list). In the rare and unlikely event of a complete tie, even after a recount (or more than one), then they just draw lots. My blog | My photos | My video clips"too literate to be spam" |
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Post by Deleted on Mar 25, 2014 13:51:58 GMT
Actually the winning list does not get half the seat and half of what is left, because that would mean that the winner always gets 75% of the seats. The winners gets half of the seats and the rest of the seats are divided by percentage of votes received per list that received at least 10% of the vote. Here is the map of the various electoral systems of the world, so it appears that nobody has yet found one that everybody can agree upon.  I tried to read the relevant wiki, but it made my head spin. |
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Post by Deleted on Mar 25, 2014 15:27:07 GMT
God, I have NO idea why they show Britain and Canada with the same electoral system as the US. If the Electoral Colleges and Supreme Court can decide the winners, I don't see any similarity with our "first past the post".
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Post by bjd on Mar 25, 2014 15:41:58 GMT
Kerouac, yes they do get a permanent 75%. If there are only two lists, one gets just over 50%, therefore gets 50% of the remaining seats.
Lizzy -- Canada has the same system as Britain, but surely they don't have electoral colleges? It has been a long time since I left Canada and was not particularly interested in politics then, but who chooses the candidates for parliamentary elections? Isn't it the political parties? Or do you have primaries of some kind now?
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Post by Deleted on Mar 25, 2014 16:00:52 GMT
bjd, yes, Canada and the UK are parliamentary systems. Completely different from the US.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 25, 2014 17:52:19 GMT
Kerouac, yes they do get a permanent 75%. If there are only two lists, one gets just over 50%, therefore gets 50% of the remaining seats. Sorry, quite a few lists are going to win this year with no more than 40% of the vote and in some cases even less. |
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Post by lagatta on Mar 26, 2014 15:44:29 GMT
It is bizarre. Not only are Canada and Britain the same colour as the US, with a very different system, but why is Australia a different shade than the other Westminster countries? And New Zealand completely so...
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Post by patricklondon on Mar 26, 2014 17:18:13 GMT
Is it to do with the voting system - i.e., First Past the Post, list-based proportional-representation, preferential voting systems, etc? That might explain some of the apparent oddities on the map (though actually for the UK the position is a little more complicated, since there are variant systems for some forms of election, e.g., the Northern Ireland Assembly (STV), the Welsh and Scottish Parliaments and the Greater London Assembly (something more like the German system) and the Mayor of London (Supplementary Vote). And I believe all EU countries use list-based PR for the European Parliament. My blog | My photos | My video clips"too literate to be spam" |
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Post by Deleted on Mar 26, 2014 17:48:11 GMT
Even in France there is a combination of systems -- the two round system for most elections, the electoral college for the senate and the proportional system for the European elections, split into regional zones. There is a call for a mixed system which would allow a dose of proportional representation for the legislature, but naturally the principal political parties are in no hurry to change anything.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 31, 2014 5:59:54 GMT
Well, it happened. In the town of Lescar in southwestern France, the two candidates tied in the second round with 2670 votes each. The incumbent was older than his challenger, so he will continue to be mayor.
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Post by mossie on Mar 31, 2014 15:54:51 GMT
Age before beauty, exactly as it should be.
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Post by patricklondon on Apr 2, 2014 7:04:19 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Apr 5, 2014 18:21:55 GMT
Today was the day that French mayors were actually elected by the members of the municipal councils that were elected last Sunday. It was noted that even though France has a law for sexual parity that requires that 50% of the candidates be women on each and every electoral list, in the end only 17% of the mayors are women.
However, France is not all that bad compared to the rest of the world. In Europe, we now have a woman mayors in Paris, Madrid, Kiev, Warsaw and Sofia. Around the rest of the planet, there is not much to celebrate for women, but perhaps Latin America has the best record: Lima, Montevideo, Santiago, and Havana. In the United States, Houston is the only big city (pop. 1 million +) with a woman mayor, and other cites here and there around the world include Cape Town, Yokohama, Wellington and Nouakchott.
France is improving slightly since the number of women mayors nevertheless increased from 12% to the new level of 17%. But the number of women running big cities other than Paris has not increased. It is still Lille, Aix-en-Provence, Nantes, Amiens, Rennes.
Maybe next time.
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