Personally, I believe that in a democracy, courts shouldn’t have the power to disqualify individuals from running for office. That’s just my opinion, though, and I’m not familiar with the situation in France.
Separately, here in the U.S., I take issue with the fact that ex-felons are denied the right to vote. I believe we should push for a constitutional amendment that guarantees the right to vote for every U.S. citizen—regardless of their criminal record or other issues.
If it's been proven that a politician will cheat democracy, how is banning them from running for office a bad thing? And who should decide that if not the courts?
How would that be any different than banning someone from running a company after they've been found guilty of fraud or any other way of breaking the law about how to run companies?
If they've been proven unable to follow the law, they shouldn't be able to be elected.
As some extra context here, the judge mentioned that she was totally recognizing how heavy the situation was. But she mentioned a few things:
- it's been found that it was all part of a system designed from the very top of the party (so MLP) to embezzle money
- it's been noted that during the entire procedure, all the defendants showed complete denial of the facts and no will to accept that they did something bad
As such she pointed out that they was a high risk that they would do it again, and that's what tipped the scale in favor of banning them right away. I agree with that.
My concern is that courts can become corrupted or influenced by those in power, which creates a serious problem. While courts should have the authority to issue sentences—like prison terms—they shouldn’t be the ones deciding who the public is allowed to vote for.
If people want to vote for someone, that’s their democratic right. And if they make a mistake, they’ll learn from the consequences. But the decision should ultimately rest with the voters, not the courts.
All I have seen is that four people worked for the party while being paid by the EU. Nothing like routing money to advertising campaigns or anything that would actually swing an election. And the headlines are all about embezzlement, not election fraud. So this seems like a stretch.
I read that 9 European representatives, plus 12 assistants, plus 4 other members of the party were found guilty as part of a scheme to earn illegally EUR 2.9M for the party.
Say the person who the public vote for is in prison (and to make it "easier", prior to running for office. Or maybe they were a write-in).
That decision should lie with the voters, you say.
So which takes precedence? Prison, where they are serving a sentence? Or the democratic role?
After all, the same public, using their democratic rights, voted for a system in which that person was sentenced to prison.
So which vote is more important? The vote that says that "X is a crime, and if you are justly convicted, the sentence is Y"? Or the vote that says "If I want you to be our leader, that's more important than that previous application of justice"?
"If they've been proven unable to follow the law, they shouldn't be able to be elected."
Because it gives incumbents a strong incentive to try influencing the courts against their opponents.
I believe - yes, it is my opinion only - that existence of such incentives and a temptation to act upon them is, in the long run, more dangerous to democracy than allowing felons into elections.
People respond to incentives. If we know anything at all about human behavior, it is that people respond to incentives. And there is no shiny nice wall separating democracies from authoritarian states. Countries slide along the scale, and they can absolutely slide in the wrong direction.
I come from a former Communist country and the far left in power twisted justice beyond any recognition. We had the "pleasure" being occupied by the Nazis and then ruled by the Stalinists and the bothside-ism is absolutely spot on, because these two systems are like evil brothers.
And as for France, that is why I don't trust Mélenchon any more than Le Pen, and they have 50 per cent of voters between them. Two far-somethings don't make a democracy.
Judges sitting in those courts are not politicians elected to take decisions weighted by how their constituents will like them and reelect them, but people who've studied law and its application (unlike politicians who can be anyone), who have been vetted by peers for their capacity to be law "technicians", and whose job is to "apply" the law, whether they disagree with it or not.
That's the concept of the separation of powers. Of course judges will have opinions and can never truly be objective (no such thing exists anyway), but their main job is to apply the law. And the concept of appeal and (in France) "cassation", which meana judgment can be revised up to two times, are there so that no single judge ruling can be definitive in isolation.
If politicians can use the judicial system to ban political opponents, the system is broken and powers are not separated in the right way. And I'll definitely not say that France has a perfect separation (the president concentrate a lot more than it should), but it's still there and this wasn't such a case (in the past two years, Le Pen and the RN is the group that Macron has been willingly compromising with and letting arbitrate a lot of stuff)
There is no final arbitrator that is above all others.
Liberal democracies are build on the principle that no institution is beyond corruption. That's why they build systems based on separation of powers and checks and balances.
(1) Courts should be independent, because executive branch can be corrupt and law-making branch (voters and their representatives) don't always want to follow the laws they set up.
(2) Law making branch (elections, representatives) should be immune from courts and executive branch messing with them. Lawmakers have immunity from courts and executive. Courts and executive branch should not be able to limit candidates too much.
(3) Executive branch should execute laws, but not allowed to make them. Courts should keep the executive branch in check and have at least some immunity form it.
It's all balancing acts. Different countries have different balances.
> And who should decide that if not the courts?
We could trust voters to take that into the account when making decision who to vote.
> Liberal democracies are build on the principle that no institution is beyond corruption.
It's an ontological issue, if everyone is potentially compromised, how do you know anything ? It's also leveraged by biased medias to discredit old institutions and suddenly no more counter powers..
It's the pragmatic acknowledgment that human fallibility necessitated institutional safeguards against the concentration of power. Enlightenment thinkers like Montesquieu, came up with it.
I don't have a strong opinion on it wither way, but the GP's opinion seems totally reasonable to me.
Why shouldn't the public be able to elect whoever they want? If the courts can block candidates before they run, the courts can effectively circumvent checks and balances before the person could be elected.
> Didn't history teach us better?
I'm not sure what you're referring to here, help me out. What examples of history show the universal downsides when courts can't disqualify potential candidates?
>Why shouldn't the public be able to elect whoever they want?
Because some types of illegal behaviour of candidates can influence the vote.
This isn't about a court banning MLP because of her views or policy proposals (that would be very bad) but because she has been show to have comitted fraud by abusing EU money to pay for her own party.
Unlike in the US there are strict rules in France about how much politicians can spend on campainging and where the funds can come from that are intended to ensure a level playing field rather than favouring rich candidates.
If courts couldn't ban candidates who don't respect the rules then elections could be "bought" illegaly.
Sure, I'm not attempting to comment specifically on French laws, I don't know French laws nearly well enough.
The comment I relied to was talking about judicial powers in general, and referenced the US rather than France.
My point really isn't specific to any one country though. If an electoral system is meant to be democratic, IMO people should be able to vote for whomever they want. If a candidate can get enough support to win, so be it.
That doesn't preclude us from having laws protecting our right to free and fair elections though. A candidate will absolutely influence the vote, that's the candidate's whole job. There has to be lines drawn where it goes from campaigning to impeding a democratic election, I wasn't arguing against that.
>> Why would you want that? Didn't history teach us better?
Once you give the courts the power to disqualify candidates you open the door to massive potential for political witch hunts with the express goal of disqualifying the opposition.
Since the executive branch effectively controls the justice department, this is a pretty scary thought.
It is the same in France, the courts are independent in principle, while prosecutors remain under executive control but since 2013 they should not give orders on individual cases.
France has an additional layer of independence compared to the U.S. because of the juge d’instruction (investigating judge), who is also supposed to be independent from the executive, unlike prosecutors.
I say in principle because, judges are appointed in France and not elected. The executive as some control through appointments and career advancements but they are not supposed to use it to sanction or reward the judges.
The effectiveness of these independence mechanisms remains a subject of active debate, as evidenced by the relatively recent changes made to them.
I've always been of the opinion that a power shouldn't be granted if it can be abused so easily.
Its unreasonable to say powers should never be abusable, but it isn't hard for a political system to become politicized. That shouldn't be all it takes.
That's the thing about the nature of power -- it's not really power if it can't be easily abused. That's why with great power, comes great responsibility. Responsibility would not be needed if the power couldn't be abused.
At the end of the day if someone has the ability to prevent you from using your power, they are the ones who actually have power. So who watches the watchmen?
The US tries to solve this conundrum by making the checks on power a self-reinforcing circle. "Checks and balances". But at the end of the day, the Constitution is just a piece of paper, and all it takes to abuse power once given to you is to convince yourself you have the right.
We can diffuse the power so much that not one person can abuse it. But that has the problem of making action so impossible that the power is never used and nothing gets done. Equally problematic.
That's why it's so important to elect people of high character. Most politicians fail this test.
I think we agree here in general. For me the risk is too high when only one person can abuse power in a meaningful way with little or no check on that authority. I put most executive branch powers (in the US) on that list - the president was meant to largely be a figurehead only executing on what the legislative branch passed and the courts haven't found unconstitutional.
> That's why it's so important to elect people of high character. Most politicians fail this test.
I'd say we have failed to build a system that incentivizes anyone of high character to run for office.
The exchange of power, including consolidation and fragmentation of power, is politics.
Courts give orders, but the coercive powers of fines and incarceration are administrative. At the federal level, and the few states I'm familiar with, these are executive branch powers.
To whatever degree the founders were deeply flawed people, they understood power quite well. They didn't create a democracy as much as they created a polyarchy. Their interest was to make ambitions compete. Ambition to counter ambition.
They were most concerned by consolidated power. Monarchy. For obvious reasons.
"Politicization" is just politics, which is nothing more than how human interact when it comes to gaining power.
Your problem is with human nature - it's not going to change.
We'll never have a system where we find "good humans" who don't have the urge to win by any means necessary. So you need to devise a system that makes that as hard as possible.
The problem is tying this to the category of felony, which is too broad of a category.
Someone who committed something heinous like felony assault, there’s still an easy argument to be made that they should be allowed to both run for office and vote.
But if someone was guilty of some kind of corruption, bribery, taking bribes, spying, insurrection, treason, organized crime, violating their oath of office, or anything else that suggests they are not going to serve with the best interests of their constituents and the world at heart, they should absolutely not be allowed to run for office, and maybe should not be allowed to vote.
This is Separation of Power Issue and not a clear cut issue. The principle is that Law, Law-making, and executive-power should be separated.
It's really who you trust more: courts or the people.
1. French law recognizes that French people are not trusted to weigh in the conviction properly, and the court sentences put limits to how can and can't run.
2. On the other hand, corrupting of the courts would prevent correcting the system by voting. If the courts are corrupt all hope is lost.
> 2. On the other hand, corrupting of the courts would prevent correcting the system by voting. If the courts are corrupt all hope is lost.
Just last week a turkish court arrested the mayor of Istanbul under similar "corruption" charges. He happens to be the most popular opposition politician challenging Erdogan.
EDIT: forgot to mention that recently Romanian supreme court canceled the elections altogether because the current government did not like the guy who won the first round. And of course he is not allowed to run in the rerun of the elections. People's votes do not seem to count any longer.
It's relevant that the corruption charges against Erdoğan's opponent are obviously trumped-up, whereas the ones against Le Pen are entirely legitimate.
Kinda, sometimes politicians gets elected, and tear down the courts who could say against them. Belarus was a democracy for a short time, until the future dictator ordered SWAT team to throw out members of parliament who wanted his impeachment. Then several of them disappeared forever, others got the message. And the democracy ended.
Donald Trump is in the process of doing this right now. Law firms that worked with the prosecution of many of his cases are being actively pressured. In some cases they are being banned from government owned buildings, banned from lists of law firms the federal government may hire and having security clearances revoked.
I think Democrats are doing a disservice by not pushing back harder against Trump’s attacks on judges and his calls for their impeachment. The judiciary is one of the few remaining institutions that can check executive overreach, and defending it should be a top priority.
More broadly, I believe Democrats would gain much more support if they focused on a few key issues—ones that have broad consensus and appeal to independents—and pursued them with laser focus. Instead, they tend to chase after every single distraction Trump throws their way, which only plays into his strategy.
There is separation of powers: The legislature made the law, the executive enforces it, the courts interpet it. The legislature is more responsible than the courts, IMHO.
The real responsible person is Marine Le Pen: Don't commit crimes and you won't have these problems.
The temporary loss of the right to stand for election is a common punishment in France when politicians are convicted of corruption and breach of trust.
I don't think anyone is questioning whether it's legal, simply whether it's right or ideologically consistent with people who claim to be pro-democracy.
Do you believe that non-citizens should be allowed to run for any office? Or that citizens living outside a state/district should be allowed to represent that state/distict? If not, courts and/or election officials must have the power to disqualify individuals. As long as there are any legal requirements for a candidate, someone must make the final decision on whether a potential candidate fulfills the requirements.
If your crime is so heinous as to come with life-long punishment, you should be in prison for life. If the idea of putting someone in prison for life for a particular crime makes you take pause, perhaps they shouldn't have any life-long punishment for that crime. This includes all Constitutionally-protected rights: voting, gun rights, whatever one you want to pick.
Conversely, if there are so many prisoners or the disenfranchised that, in a democracy, they can sway elections and drive policy, isn't that a sign there's something wrong with the system, e.g. disenfranchisement and prison is being used as a weapon against parts of the population? Denying them the vote means the system is that much harder to fix.
On the other hand, if only those who really deserve it lose their right to vote (i.e. a small fraction of the population), then it doesn't really matter if they can vote or not - their small numbers mean they won't make a difference. But the benefit is that disenfranchisement can no longer be used as a political weapon.
You shouldn't be able to vote if you are actively in prison on the day of the election. Or maybe cases like house arrest. But if we say that you're able to be walking around in society with us, including probation/parole, you should have all the rights that others have.
It doesn't come with life-long punishment. She's banned from public office for five years (immediate), and jailed for four years (won't come into effect until after the appeal).
I'm just talking about felons in the US who have served their time in incarceration and finished parole/probation/supervised release being denied multiple rights for the rest of their lives.
Good thing Florida exempted Trump from their "convicted felons can't vote" laws, too, huh?
Oh, it's Trump, they said, well, yes, he has been convicted, but because a sentence has not been imposed or completed he's akshualllly not reallly a felon... yet.
All the inmates in Florida prisons whose sentences have not been completed were very surprised to learn they were still eligible to vote.
In this case an appeal would normally suspend the verdict so the judge in effect specifically decided to prevent her from running for President by imposing immediate effect on a verdict that isn't final.
No doubt that this will only strengthen the claims that this is politically motivated, and the timing is obviously very "interesting"... So unclear how this will play out in public opinion and polls.
That's how democracy works in Europe: the courts are part of the checks and ballances, politicians have to be transparent about campaign financing so that we hopefully don't get Uncle Adolph running the show again, needing Allied intervention again and bombs dropped on innocent people and beer factories.
Le Pen's case is similar to Sarkozy takng a briefcase of cash from Gaddafi to finance hus campaign (and then waging war agsinst him) but it's more nuanced, because instead she used EU funds when Putin's funding dried up due to the need to finance his war. So basically she should probably be in the same place that Sarkozy is now or wherever the court will decide based on evidence.
Separately, here in the U.S., I take issue with the fact that ex-felons are denied the right to vote. I believe we should push for a constitutional amendment that guarantees the right to vote for every U.S. citizen—regardless of their criminal record or other issues.