Then a fourth control, another witness, using the same voting roll, has a small, mask like template that they put over your page, and asks you to sign in the little box on your line. You cannot accidently sign in the wrong box (unless this controller makes a mistake, of course, but they've been told by two different people where to find your name, so I suspect it doesn't happen very often!) because the template only exposes your box to sign. Everybody politely says, "Thank you, good day," and moves on.
At the end of the day, the four members of the voting office and any and all candidate witnesses, who, based on what I saw in Beijing, there were quite a few, go to a room to count the votes. The transparent urns are placed on tables in the middle of the room so that anyone can circulate around them to witness the counting. The total envelop count is first verified against the number of signatures on the voter roll.
Then, for each urn, each candidate is to have two witnesses each. One opposing pair (left wing and right wing) verifies the voting roll and the other opposing pair, left wing-right wing witnesses the ballot count. The remaining candidate witnesses are free to circulate around the tables to verify, but law stipulates that a minimum of four persons are seated at each urn table to witness the ballot count, with an equal number of competing party members in the mix. Each envelop is opened, and one of the witnesses unfolds the ballot to read it and hands it to their competing party partner, who reads out loud the ballot's name. The other two competing witnesses each have the same ballot control sheet and upon hearing the name called out, mark their respective ballot tallies. Naturally, at the end of the day, these two ballot tally sheets need to be identical, or the count starts over!
Any irregular ballot is placed off to the side with its envelop attached, to be decided upon by the persons in attendance. Ballots do get disqualified: hand writing on the envelop or ballot, having more than one ballot in the envelop, voters trying to put their own ballot inside, obviously empty envelops, etc. In the second round of the French presidential election, there were two million disqualified ballots, which was taken as an indication of a certain level of dissatisfaction about the two finalists, at least for some citizens! But they showed up to voice their opinion to the princes of power about how they feel!
Once the two ballot tallies match up, the two competing controllers sign these registers. Then, with all witnesses on hand, a "Minutes of the Vote" is written up, with the results noted and everyone duly putting their signatures upon it.
Reflecting on the lengths the French go to in order to assure fair, open and transparent elections, the system is awfully fool proof. So, pretend you are a political party operative hired to steal an election in France. Where do you see the weak links?
Flashback to America"
Hanging chads, using the wrong kind of pencil, marking the wrong box, (rigged) electronic voting machines sold to sucker citizens by politically motivated CEOs, one party hacks disappearing with opaque urns or the voting software for hours on end? Handing over democracy's most precious right to Wall Street and political goons that Stalin or Hitler would be proud of? In France? Are you kidding? What I witnessed in Beijing is repeated thousands of times across France and around the world, using the same exact system, the same ballots, envelopes, transparent urns, voter rolls and double competing, open air, multi-witness counting procedures. It is controlled and duplicated at the federal level, 100% by the French government, managed by the mayors and witnessed by umpteen mutually suspicious political party representatives. And it is all paid for by French taxpayers.
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