The President of the Republic announced it at a press conference Tuesday evening. He wants “an in-depth reform of the “Paris-Lyon-Marseille” law to return to common law”. That is to say: modify the so-called “PLM” law of 1982 (in fact the PML law, but it doesn’t matter) which organizes a slightly different voting method in these three large cities, given their size, to make it look a little more like what is done in the other municipalities. But is this operation the result of a desire for electoral “tampering”, as the socialists denounce in Paris, or does it on the contrary respond to a democratic demand for representativeness, as the Macronists, and a large number of ‘elected and elected Republicans?
A single vote to elect Paris councilors and district councilors
First, let’s go back to basics. Currently, in Paris, Lyon and Marseille, voters vote for lists which are different in each district. The list for which they vote does not necessarily include the name of their future mayor, unlike other cities, where there is only one list for the entire city (and not per district). This difference was created at the time to take into account the size of cities, and to create district councils. “Democratization on the scale of the district is immense progress,” defended the mayor of the 18th arrondissement, Eric Lejoindre, during a press conference organized Thursday by the Parisian executive. “The 14th arrondissement of Paris has 240,000 inhabitants, it is the equivalent of the city of Bordeaux,” recalled deputy Lamia El Aaraje as an example.
Let’s look in a little more detail at how the elections go in these three major cities, taking the example of Paris (if you already have knots in your brain, skip this paragraph, and for Marseille, click here). If a list obtains an absolute majority of votes in the first round, it automatically gains half of the seats on the Paris Council, the rest being distributed proportionally. If a list receives 50% of the votes, it obtains 50% of the seats and half of the remaining 50% (50+25), i.e. ultimately 75% of the seats. The first on each list in each district are designated to the Council of Paris, which is both a municipal and departmental council, the structure bringing together the two skills. The rest of the councilors elected in each district (therefore at the bottom of the list) participate only in the district council. Then, the elected representatives of the Paris Council elect the mayor of Paris, and the district councilors elect the district mayor. Their common fate is therefore sealed in one vote, and depends on their position on the list.
A ballot that does not reflect the total votes
The disadvantage of this ballot, some have denounced for years, is that it does not reflect the total votes. In 1983, Gaston Defferre, socialist mayor of Marseille and also Minister of the Interior and architect of the PLM law, won the election in the Marseille city with a smaller total of votes than his opponent Jean-Claude Gaudin. Ditto for Gérard Collomb in 2001. “The PLM law is a bit like the story of Hillary Clinton in the USA facing Donald Trump. An archaic vote which made Trump his 45th president, despite Hillary Clinton’s more than 200,000 additional votes at the popular level. writes political scientist Virginie Martin in the Revue Politique et Parlementaire.
But how does this gap occur? What matters is not the votes, but the number of councilors who vote for you. And we must win not all of the votes in these sectors, but only half. Hence the importance of key districts which can swing to one side or the other, like the “swing states” in the United States. In Paris, the 12th, 14th and central arrondissements. The other harmful effect of this system is that left-wing candidates are not very encouraged to look at districts traditionally on the right, and vice versa. “It is an opaque ballot which creates polarization with parties who only have an interest in addressing only part of the city,” summarizes David Amiel, deputy for Paris under the Renaissance label, one of the architects of this draft text.
The proposed reform: two different votes and a 25% bonus
The reform that he is proposing with his colleagues, notably Sylvain Maillard, the leader of the Renaissance group in Paris, is based on two principles. First, the organization of two separate elections on the same day, one to elect the district councils, the other to elect the Paris Council. Then, a “majority bonus” lowered to 25%, that is to say that the list coming first would not immediately obtain half of the votes but only 25%, the rest being distributed proportionally.
But is this reform really motivated by the need to better represent voters? The announcement was made by Emmanuel Macron in the wake of the appointment of Rachida Dati to Culture, even though the latter, who recognized the existence of a deal with the president, had been pleading for such a reform for a long time, that she thinks is favorable to the right in Paris. “It’s electoral manipulation,” denounces Hidalgo’s first deputy, like all the Parisian socialists. “They say they want to put ‘one citizen one vote’, but it will be ‘one citizen two votes’. They say they want to return to common law but a 25% premium is not common law,” criticized Rémi Féraud, the leader of the socialists at the Council of Paris, in a press conference this Thursday.
How can we ensure that the districts are represented?
Where the Parisian socialists have a little difficulty in making their idea of ”electoral tampering” heard is that such a vote, if it were applied today, would not have caused Anne Hidalgo to lose, at least opposite. The mayor of Paris would have come away with 123 seats instead of 97, according to their own calculations. Which allows David Amiel to display good intentions. “Nothing would have changed in 2020. But it changes the way elected officials govern. This encourages them to govern for the whole city,” argues the deputy.
There remains one problem, and a significant one, with the reform as proposed: how to ensure that the elected officials sent to the Council of Paris have local roots, and represent all the districts? “In the event of a single list in Paris, there will be entire districts of Paris which will no longer be represented on the Paris Council,” worries Eric Lejoindre. “There must be an obligation that the elected representatives of the Paris Council are representative of all the districts and that they are all on the district council,” argues constitutionalist Olivier Passelecq, also deputy mayor in the 6th arrondissement and member of the Radical party. .
A bonus of 25% which could displease the constitutional council
Especially since the 25% proposal has a good chance of being rejected, believes the law professor at Paris-Panthéon-Assas University. “This will not pass before the Constitutional Council, it will be seen as a breach of equality. The tinkering is not so much in the change in voting method. It is more about lowering the premium from 50% to 25% while in all other cities it is 50%…”
In any case, the Macronists will have to hurry if they want to reform the voting system. It is in fact customary not to modify electoral rules in the year preceding the election. Which means that the bill must be tabled before fall 2024, for final adoption in March 2025.