French Presidential Elections: Capitalism Wins
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Following is a discussion on the page titled: French Presidential Elections: Capitalism Wins.
Below is the discussion so far. Feel free to add your own comments!Macron has won the election (which isn't good, but at least Le Pen isn't president).Would French socialists have the possibilty to show up in the results if they had voted "World Socialism"`? I'm talking about the second round here, not the first one.If not, would it be bad to have voted Macron, even if support for the WSM would not been possible to show in the election resulsts?I am slightly leaning on saying "no", as I would be voting on a politically crappy candidate, but I become less sure of myself if there's no way to show specific support for the WSM.
I think you must have missed this information from another thread:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/forum/general-discussion/whither-france?page=2#comment-40642You would have been in good company in refusing to choose either of the two second-round candidates: some 4 million others did and that's only counting those who went to the polling stations and put a ballot paper in the urn.Incidentally, in France, they don't vote by putting an X against the name of one of the candidates listed on the ballot paper. You put in the ballot box a piece of paper with the name of the candidate on it. So there's nothing stopping you putting a piece of paper in across which you've written "Je vote pour le socialisme mondial".
Sympo wrote:Macron has won the election (which isn't good, but at least Le Pen isn't president).Would French socialists have the possibilty to show up in the results if they had voted "World Socialism"`? I'm talking about the second round here, not the first one.If not, would it be bad to have voted Macron, even if support for the WSM would not been possible to show in the election resulsts?I am slightly leaning on saying "no", as I would be voting on a politically crappy candidate, but I become less sure of myself if there's no way to show specific support for the WSM.Socialists can show support for the WSM even in the absence of a candidate by writing 'World Socialism' across their ballot papers. Believe me, if enough workers did that consistently it would soon be noticed. Actually we can't be sure that some didn't do that in the French Presidential election considering 8.6% (around 4 million people) either spoiled their ballot or left it blank. And the number who abstained from voting totalled 12.1 million, the highest since 1969. Taken together, those figures represented a third of all those eligible to vote.We do not, under any circumstances, support the tactic of voting for "the lesser of two (or more) evils".
ALB wrote:"Incidentally, in France, they don't vote by putting an X against the name of one of the candidates listed on the ballot paper. You put in the ballot box a piece of paper with the name of the candidate on it. So there's nothing stopping you putting a piece of paper in across which you've written "Je vote pour le socialisme mondial"."Does the spoiled ballot show up in the statistics though? I'm talking about France specifically here. I know in some countries, it is possible to see, after the election, how many people who has written "World Socialism".
gnome wrote:"And the number who abstained from voting totalled 12.1 million, the highest since 1969. Taken together, those figures represented a third of all those eligible to vote."Yes, but if (and this might not be the case in France) there is no way to know how many people who spoiled their ballots by writing "World Socialism", there's no way for anyone to know that anyone has written "World Socialism" at all.So socialists who has written "World Socialism" might as well be stalinists or conservatives who hate Macron and Le Pen, seeing as there is no way to show support for World Socialism. The only thing you can do is to show discontent for two candidates.But I have no idea if they count the votes in France in this way. Do they write in what people have written on their spoiled ballots? Or do they just say 'count this "World Socialism' vote as a spoilt vote", without specifying what's been written on it?
Voici the official result:http://elections.interieur.gouv.fr/presidentielle-2017/FE.htmlAs you can see there were about 3 million "blanc" votes and another 1 million "nul" votes in the second round (a huge increase compared with the first round). I imagine it's like in Britain — if you write anything (whatever it is) on the ballot paper it's counted as a spoilt paper. I don't think they count how many people wrote "None of the Above" or "Fuck off the lot of you" or "World Socialism". In fact, I know they don't.But that's not the point. The point is abstention, putting a blank paper in the ballot box, or writing something on the ballot paper are legitimate political alternatives to voting for one or other of the candidates. We favour going to the polling station over simply abstaining as this shows that we attach some importance to the exist of elections. Anarchists, on the other hand, abstain because they don't believe in elections.
ALB wrote:"I don't think they count how many people wrote "None of the Above" or "Fuck off the lot of you" or "World Socialism". In fact, I know they don't."They actually do that in some countries. In Sweden every ballots writing appears to be registrered. For example, if one looks at official statistics you will find that 2 individuals have voted for "myself" and 2 people have voted for "Mickey Mouse", which aren't names for any serious or frivolous party. 5 people voted for World Socialism."But that's not the point. The point is abstention, putting a blank paper in the ballot box, or writing something on the ballot paper are legitimate political alternatives to voting for one or other of the candidates. We favour going to the polling station over simply abstaining as this shows that we attach some importance to the exist of elections."Hmm. I have somehow gotten the impression that the puropse of writing "World Socialism" on the ballot would, to a good extent, be so that socialists would be able to show support for Socialism. I guess I would have voted blank but it slightly loses its appeal when nobody will be able to see what I have written on the ballot.
Sympo wrote:In Sweden every ballots writing appears to be registrered. For example, if one looks at official statistics you will find that 2 individuals have voted for "myself" and 2 people have voted for "Mickey Mouse", which aren't names for any serious or frivolous party. 5 people voted for World Socialism.That's interesting. Are these official statistics somewhere on the internet?
ALB wrote:That's interesting. Are these official statistics somewhere on the internet?Yes, it's here:Röster – Val 2014Though it appears that you only see the result if at least two people has written the same thing.
Thanks. The next time there's an election in Sweden we should definitely produce a leaflet for the comrades there to distribute so that we can get the numbers up. There are definitely more than two people in Sweden who want "världssocialism". When is it due?
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