FK. Civil rights have stopped declining since 1994. Consequently, people still have their rights, unless they are specifically stripped of them by the courts (for example, for terrorism or public procurement fraud).
However, the fundamental right to vote, which is enshrined in the Constitution, is completely ignored by prisons.
The administrative procedures are far too complex, so prisoners have a hard time starting a proceeding. The only possible solutions are proxy voting and authorised leave from prison, which is hardly ever granted for this reason. The few that make such a request, are often refused due to organisational limitations.
Prison environments keep inmates from exercising their right to vote. The Constitutional Council reminded us during their 2017 observations that only 2% of prisoners were able to vote in the last elections.
If we allow voting in prisons, there will be an even stronger presence of the Republic in the prison world, and this will clear a path for reintegration. Poland and Denmark had no problems installing voting stations in their prisons.
We are, therefore, happy that Mr Macron is making progress in promoting prison voting.
Now, onto the content. At the end of 2018, a government project was presented as an amendment. It was submitted to the Senate the day before the opening of the Justice Act debates, but was never discussed. The project was on prisoner voting rights for the European elections. Inmates would vote by proxy voting in a special virtual office in Paris.
In principle, this has advanced the fight we have been engaged in for years. However, at this stage, nothing concrete is planned. We do not know how the vote will be held, nor to whom the ballot is supposed to be turned in… All the specialists in the prison world feel like this project is technocratic and unrealistic. We all know that it is common for prisoners to not know how to write. Furthermore, no matter how honest the prison administration is, no inmate
Today, we have two projects before us: the incomplete government one and our project. Ours is ready, complete, and quickly implementable with a decree written by Frédéric Thiriez .
Since 2013, Robin des lois and their partners have been actively campaigning for the installation of voting stations in prisons. Our project can be easily realised. In contrast, today, the government project has stalled due to the delays in the Justice Act vote. . To me, it seems impossible. For our part, if in eight days the Minister of Internal Affairs says “let’s go”, we will all have the documents ready, prepared by an “informal collective”:
-
Sergio Coronado, former member of the Law Commission of the National Assembly
-
Martine Herzog-Evans, Criminal Justice Professor at the University of Reims and sentence enforcement specialist
-
Emmanuel Ludot, defence lawyer at Reims
-
Jean-Christophe Ménard, Lawyer specialised in electoral law, University Lecturer at Sciences-Po Paris. He is a pillar of the collective. For the most part, he starts proceedings, and is a defender of preserving pre-existent laws.
-
Éric Péchillon, Public law Professor at the University of Rennes and specialist in prison matters
-
Frédéric Thiriez, former Master of Requests of the Council of State, lawyer at the Council of State and at the Court of Cassation. He wrote the decree.
It is a matter of installing voting stations in our prisons that are no different to those that already operate in municipalities [across France] and in numerous countries. But the law must not be changed. The law must be applied. That means applying article R40 from the Electoral Code. This article gives the prefects the annual authority to create or remove a station with the relevant voters list. It is actually quite simple. Jean-Christophe Ménard had the great idea of applying the law. Our procedure proved that sure enough, article R40 can be applied to prisons too.
**But what is a prison voting station? Maybe I did not explain it well enough… A voting station is a room, like a nursery or a gymnasium. It is a prefect’s legal creation. We chose the second Clermont-Ferrand station to be a prison and the third one to be Saint-Joseph’s Nursery School. It is really as easy as that. It is a legal creation, with a list that goes along with it. **
We offer to install the voting stations for two to three hours (the time it takes for each inmate to vote, if they wish to). Of course, assessors and the town’s councillors come and man the station, the voting booth, ballot box, table, and list. All of this can be easily done. The Minister of Justice decides whether voting stations are installed in a prison or not. All he or she has to do is send a letter to the Prison Governor: “You need to get in touch with the Prefect, bring in the ballot boxes, issue permits, and have them vote, etc.”. It is not rocket science.
