The posters and brochure covers of the two leading presidential candidates. Is is just me, or does Hollande look like Droopy? I also find the psychology of Sarkozy not looking directly at his constituents interesting.
So, everything being described is doubled, with two urns, two sets of voting booths, etc. Thus, there were a minimum of eight witnesses, and by law, these are people of competing political interests. And on top of that, there were many witnesses observing to keep everybody honest.
For each urn, four people control the voting operation. The first person looks at your ID, finds you on the voting rolls, marks your name on the big list and puts a small piece of paper with the page number and line number inside your passport or with your national ID. The next step is to get your ballots.
Government printed ballots on low quality notebook paper, about the size of an index card, are laid out on a long table, one for each candidate. So, in the first round of the presidential election, the ballot table had 10 stacks of ballots, one for each candidate. There is also a stack of government printed envelopes, cerulean blue, with the state seal on the outside. Voters can take all ten (to be discreet) or can only pick up the ballot of the candidate they intend to vote for. Most voters choose the discreet option.
The paper ballots of the two front runners. The paper used is like the slick kind used to wrap dishes when moving.
Once inside the private voting booths, the voter folds their chosen ballot in half, puts it in their small, greeting card-sized envelope and slips the envelop tongue inside the envelop, without using any glue, so it stays closed but can be easily opened when the ballots are counted. Inside the booth is a trash can where the voter can dispose of their unused ballots.
Once the envelop is prepared, you pass to a second recorder/witness who again checks your ID against the same voter roll and double checks that the first recorder got the voter name, ID, page and line number correct, using that slip of paper given before going into the booth. They announce to the urn manager "they are good to go". You then step up to the urn, the urn manager flips a spring loaded chute handle to open the slot, you drop your ballot-filled envelop in the big, clear, Plexiglas urn and watch it drop on top of all the other ballots in the box. The urn manager says loudly, for all the world to hear, "Sir, you have voted!" (Monsieur, vous avez votà �!)
I think the transparent urns are a statement, a real symbol to the citizens that "our elections are truly free and fair!" I can only speculate they used glass before plastic was invented.
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