Holiday! Celebrate!

Here's a pretty chart on how many paid vacation days people get annually in different countries. It shows Finland and France tied at the top with 30 days each, but that's a simplification. The report (PDF) says, "In Finland, annual leave rises from 24 working days to 30 working days after the employee's first year, and public servants with at least 15 years of tenure receive 36 working days." It totally doesn't matter, though, as we blow the Frenchies away in paid public holidays nine to one. Suomi! Suomi! Suomi!

Election day in France

Here are a few random thoughts on today's French presidential election:

I watched parts of the televised debate on TV5 during commercial breaks. Based purely on the candidates' body language, as I barely understood a word they were saying, I got the impression that Sarkozy was winning. The next day some newspapers praised Royal for going on the attack, but I thought she was quite obviously overdoing it, to the point where a neutral viewer's sympathy would go to Sarkozy for having to deal with her constant interruptions. I'll note that polls taken since the debate have mostly shown Sarkozy increasing his lead.

Having a political system where everyone pretty much gets along with everyone else may be a bit boring, but it sure beats a situation where one side can credibly warn of security problems if the other side wins. Former Interior Minister Kari Rajamäki (Social Democratic Party) hinted at that direction (fi) before the parliamentary election, but that was very vague and easy to laugh off besides.

Jacques Chirac may have been an oily old crook, but at least he was an entertaining oily old crook. Do we have any idea about what the candidates think of Matti Vanhanen's sex appeal? What are their thoughts on Ilkka Kanerva's competence? How about Finnish food? (And don't answer, "No thanks.")

It's difficult to figure out what outcome the Finnish government would prefer. Probably the most important issue to them that will be influenced by the result is the EU constitution. Sarkozy's likely victory would be a boost to the mini-treaty camp, which is not the camp in which Finland currently resides; Royal has promised a new referendum on whatever the result happens to be, which is a risky proposition, and would probably want to insert some left-wing stuff in there. Both are cold on Turkey's EU membership, although Royal would shunt the responsibility for closing the door on the French public, proposing another referendum. Again the Finnish government is in the other camp. Neither candidate elicits much enthusiasm in Vanhanen and company, I would wager.

The English language press is often highly condescending toward the French. It's almost as if there's some past history there...

Appetite for politics

Writes Charles Bremner of the Times in his blog:

You have to admire the French appetite for politics. Nicolas Sarkozy had been interviewed for 1 hour 20 minutes before I got my 20 minutes with him on France 2 television last night. Ségolène Royal, the Socialist, had submitted to the same ritual the night before. Not many countries would put up with so much political talk on prime time.

Pshaw.

Let's rank presidential candidates

No, this is not a way too early post on the 2012 race.

With the government program including an electronic voting pilot project to be implemented in the 2008 municipal elections, it's time to consider going to ballots that allow the voter to rank the candidates in presidential elections. Such voting methods are more time-consuming to count by hand, but if we move to electronic voting, that ceases to be an important issue. A hand count can still be done to verify the result - just make a paper trail a required feature in the voting machines - but the preliminary machine-counted results would be available immediately. There are two big advantages to this: Firstly, we'd need only one round of voting since people can express their full range of preferences in one ballot. Secondly, it would eliminate the need for tactical voting, which is a common feature in two-round elections. Why organize two votes when you can get to an accurate result in one?

The French presidential election, which uses the same two-round method as the Finnish one, illustrates the incentives for tactical voting that often arise in that system. A voter who prefers the environmentalist candidate Voynet but above all is opposed to conservative candidate Sarkozy should vote for centrist candidate Bayrou, because according to polls Bayrou has the best chance of beating Sarkozy in the second round. On the other hand, a supporter of communist candidate Besancenot should consider voting for the socialist Royal to ensure that there'll be a left-wing candidate in the second round. The common thread is that neither can vote for the candidate they feel is the best. If France used an election method based on ranking the options, they could.

If you want to get fancy about it, you could use some Condorcet method. If you want to keep it simple, go for the tested Single Transferable Vote.

French election machine

For the lovers of election machines, now there's one on the French presidential election (fr). It's pretty rudimentary compared to the Finnish ones with which you may be familiar, but it still passes the time. I don't speak French, but by using Altavista's Babelfish translator, I managed to answer the questions. However, I must have misunderstood some questions or the damned thing isn't very well designed, because it recommended to me - drum roll, please - Marie-George Buffet of the Communist Party of France! After Marie-George at 48 percent, Socialist Ségolène Royal (44%) and Green Dominique Voynet (40%) followed. The main right-wing candidate Nicolas Sarkozy and the centrist François Bayrou, the candidates I expected it to spit out first, were tied for fourth with 36 percent.

Apparently I'm just a move to France away from becoming a communist. It's quite distressing.

A few English language blogs on the event:

• France Decides 2007 by Christopher delaMare
• France Profonde by Tim King at Prospect Magazine
• French Élection 2007 by Boz