François Bayrou does not let go of his desire to review the method of electing elected officials at the Palais-Bourbon. MoDem deputies on Wednesday tabled a new bill for the election of deputies by proportional representation. This constant claim of the boss of the centrist party was especially advocated by Emmanuel Macron both during the presidential election of 2017 and in 2022.
The bill, presented by the president of the MoDem group Jean-Paul Mattei and co-signed by all the deputies of his group, was registered with the presidency of the Assembly. The explanatory memorandum takes up the traditional arguments of the centrist party in favor of proportional representation and against the “brutality” of the two-round majority uninominal voting system, in force since the beginning of the Fifth Republic, with the exception of the legislative elections of 1986.
A measure to combat abstention
“It is likely that a large part of the growing abstention observed in recent decades is the result of this non-choice” of proportional representation. “Who would want to vote when their sensitivity is not represented in the 2nd round? “, can we read in this explanatory memorandum. The text therefore advocates, for the election of deputies, a departmental proportional voting system with, for the candidate lists, a threshold to be crossed of 5% to be admitted to the distribution of seats.
The MoDem deputies had already, under the previous mandate, tabled a bill to this effect, presented by the former president of the centrist group Patrick Mignola. They also passed a resolution in February inviting the government to reflect on this reform.
The institutional overhaul wanted by Emmanuel Macron in 2018 included the election of part of the Assembly by proportional representation, but the reform had not been successful. The president again came out in favor of this method of voting during the last presidential campaign, in particular during a trip to Pau, a city of which François Bayrou is the mayor.