France brings together a particularly active community of researchers who scientifically decipher the various voting systems and their consequences on our democracy. The presidential election gave them the opportunity to test their hypotheses again.
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On April 10, during the first round of the 2022 presidential election, several hundred Strasbourg voters were able to vote … twice. At the exit of two official polling stations was indeed a second almost identical device, with urn, voting boots and ballots. However, it presented a difference in size, offering citizens to vote thanks to the classic system – the majority of two towers – but also through other voting methods, based on notes, multiple choices or even mentions to be given to candidates.
This operation is the fact of the Voting Stepter team, a group of CNRS researchers in economics from four French universities, which today delivers to the world the first results of this experiment in real conditions. What to provide new lessons on the choice – far from being neutral – of a voting system.
The team develops this type of protocol for each presidential election for twenty years, inspiring other similar initiatives around the world. “The study of voting systems, what is called the theory of social choice, brings together hundreds of researchers from various backgrounds: political science, economics, mathematics, IT …, lists the professor of economics Antoinette Baujard (University of Saint-Etienne), one of the pillars of the Voter Team differently. The densest scientific communities are in France, where this field of research experienced a real boom in the 1970s. “
The question of voting methods actually finds its origins from the 18th century e century, with in particular the mathematician of the Nicolas de Condorcet. This was one of the first to scientifically describe the problems linked to uninominal voting systems (where each voter chooses only one name among the candidates, as in the French elections). For example, a candidate capable of beat any other face to face, designated as the “condocet winner”, can in some cases be eliminated. A major bias far from being just theoretical. During the 2007 election, the centrist François Bayrou found himself being, according to various polls of the time, the “condocet winner”. In other words, in front of any other candidate elected President of the Republic, a majority of French people would have preferred to see in place François Bayrou … yet eliminated by these same French in the first round. Note that, during the first round of this 2007 presidential election, the Voter Sentere team had tested two other voting methods in six French polling stations, which systematically gave François Bayrou winner.
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