I had the rare opportunity this weekend to see another country attempt an election. It turns out, unbeknownst to me, that the French are very secretive when it comes to voting. I was asked to try and get French voters to take a survey which, in my opinion, was typically French, ie long and bureaucratic, and the last question asked the voters to mark which person they voted for and you would have thought that you had asked them to give me their last remaining kidney. The survey was completely annoynomous and it was for a class, but several of the French looked at us as though we had asked them some horrible, demeaning question that they could never answer because G-d would come down from heaven and smite them. So during that whole fiasco, I decided to go to the bathroom which meant walking through the polling station. As I was walking through I decided to take a little peek as to how the French do this whole voting thing. So, they go into their little booth, just like we do, and mark their vote on a ballot, which they then put in a little cute orange envelope that says "Republique Francaise" (as though they could forget). They then walk over to someone who has a huge glass see through box, hand them their envolope, their identity card, and their voting card, which let's whoever the official is know that they have the right to vote in this particular election. This card gets stamped with the date (so you can't vote more than twice?) then they look at this list they have and ask the person to sign. Then they converse with everyone about the weather, the train, whatever fits their French fancy, and go along their merry way and tell me that they don't have time to take my excessively long survey. I really don't blame them for not taking the survey, I really didn't want to give it, but it still would have been nice if they had taken a little time to say, "no, i'm terribly sorry, I simply don't have time" instead of "no, really, I'm "tres presse", quickly shaking their head, looking perturbed about it all.
So, that was my experience with the French election system. Oh, my favorite thing was someone who took my survey, said he hated everything that the current mayor has done, then proceeded to tell me that he had voted for the mayor. A the hypocrisy of politics.
Conclusion of the day: Don't ask the French who they voted for and be kind to the students asking you to take a survey, they probably don't want to be their anyway.