The staff of the Consulate General of France prepared a large room on the eighth floor of the Buckhead Tower near Lenox Mall Friday for the final round of France’s presidential election on Saturday, May 6, pitting a 39-year-old candidate, who has never held elective office, against the inheritor of a right wing party that seeks to pull out of the European Union.
The improvised polling booths and the manual, “transparent” procedures were put in place to receive the 2,000 or so registered voters expected to either choose between the two final candidates or to mark their dissatisfaction by opting out.
Before entering the space they will find only two posters of the two finalists in contrast to when they voted in the first round and were faced with the posters of 11 candidates.
Emmanuel Macron, the former Socialist economics minister who created the En Marche! (Forward!) party — often referred to as “a start-up” entrepreneurial initiative— and Marine Le Pen, who heads the National Front Party, founded in 1972 to unify a variety of French nationalist movements of the time by her father Jean-Marie Le Pen, are the two finalists.
They have been considered somewhat as outliers because of their non-traditional histories — Mr. Macron has never been elected to a public office and opponents of Ms. Le Pen’s party have condemned her party for its fascist views.
The two have been barnstorming throughout the country contrasting their visions of France’s future either as pro-European and outward looking or more isolated with closed borders both to limit trade and keep out immigrants.
The highly dramatic election is to take place the following day in France, on Sunday, May 7, and the results are expected to be forecasted Sunday by the French media by 2 p.m. in Atlanta, DST.
The drama was highlighted during a brawling debate that took place earlier in the week in which both candidates hurled insults at each other, including Ms. Le Pen’s jab that if either she or M. Macron wins, the presidency will be taken over by a woman — by either herself or by Angela Merkel, the chancellor of Germany.
Ms. Le Pen repeatedly said that she would pull France out of the European Union and replace the euro with a two-tiered monetary system restoring the French franc and keeping the euro for international transactions. Mr. Macron responded by saying she didn’t know what she was talking about and that “France deserves better than you.”
Commentators have said that if Ms. Le Pen wins and France pulls out of the EU, the union could collapse.
As in the first round, the voters will pick up slips with the names of the candidates and an envelope. They then will make their way to one of the voting booths and place the slip with the candidate of their choice in the envelope and toss the other away. Those who wish to mark their dissatisfaction with both candidates will throw both slips away.
The envelopes are then to be presented to the president of the polling station: in Atlanta, Consul General Louis de Corail, who will review the voters’ identification and then allow them to slip their envelopes into a ballot box. Similar procedures are to be in place in Raleigh, N.C., Greenville, S.C., and Nashville, Tenn., which will be overseen by the honorary consuls in each city.
Electronic voting was scrapped in France once the National Security Agency for Information Systems determined that there was little chance to guarantee a 100 percent tamper-free election from hackers. The Netherlands also made a similar change after almost 10 years of electronic voting.
According to figures released by the consulate general, more than 50 percent of the French residents living in the Southeast voted for Mr. Macron in the first round.
French pollsters are prognosticating that Mr. Macron, who has received the support of many of France’s leading politicians as well as that of former U.S. President Barack Obama, is likely to win more than 60 percent of the vote. But in view of the inaccuracy of the polls in the U.S. in its most recent presidential election, the French pollsters have been more guarded in their forecasts and have hedged their comments.
The transfer of the office will take place shortly after the election, but how complete will be a transfer of power is cloaked in mystery since neither candidate is backed by well-oiled party machinery.
Although the president selects the prime minister, the composition of the French National Assembly will play a major factor in his or her ability to rule. Should the parliament include a majority of representatives hostile to the president, the presidency becomes more like a head of state limited to its primarily responsibilities for foreign policy and defense, but not national policy.
For this reason, the election that may really matter the most is not that of this weekend, but rather the parliamentary elections to take place on June 11 and 18.
Read more: French Elections Could Provide a Dose of Clarity for EU
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