L'Indépendant > Mercanti > Politics
Work of Electoral Boundaries Commission nearly finished
by Luc-Martin Jasseron in Saintes, Pierre-Jules Cordaillat in Niort, and Marie-Mélisende Leckler in Ratisbonne
11 June 2022 - 1225h
SAINTES – last week, the Electoral Boundaries Commission has finished three out of the five remaining departments outstanding. The electoral boundaries for the Inde, the Besbre, and the Scyotte were all approved last week, leaving the Cenise and the Saine-et-Loine uncompleted.
The Electoral Boundaries Commission (CRdE,
Commission de redécoupage électoral) is an
ad hoc body under the Santonian
elections commission, the Royal Elections Institute (IRE,
Institut royal des elections). The Electoral Boundaries Commission is tasked to redraw the boundaries of the constituencies for the
National Assembly of Saintonge after
the reapportionment consequent to the
2020 decennial census.
The CRdE is not a single body, but a group of 90 committees: one for each Saintonge’s 89 departments and for the city of Saintes. The departmental CRdE is tasked to determine boundaries of the National Assembly districts (called
circonscription électoral or "electoral circumscription" in Saintonge), and the boundaries of districts to departmental council elections. The membership of each departmental CRdE is composed of three career civil servants: the
Returning Officer (
directeur du scrutin) for the department’s IRE; the Departmental Registrar (
greffier départemental) who is the head of the department’s
civil registry branch of the Royal Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (IRSEE,
Institut royal de la statistique et des études économiques); and a judge selected from a
neighbouring department’s Administrative Appeals Courts (
Cours administratives d’appel). The judge chairs the departmental CRdE, with the two civil servants using their agency’s data to draw the proposed maps. All members are from independent constitutional organs, and, in the case of the judge, a branch separate from the legislature.
Process
The CRdE draws up a proposal based on the latest census. An electoral district must not vary by more than 5% from the average theoretical population of a department’s
circonscription. Political boundaries must ideally be preserved, and other factors such as proximity, continuity, accessibility, and economic and habitation patterns, must be taken into account.
The CRdE then solicits comments and holds public hearings to listen to objections and suggestions. A hearing is also held for the legislature where the boundaries are intended for. For National Assembly constituencies, the departmental CRdE holds a public hearing with members of the National Assembly’s Permanent Electoral Subcommittee (a subcommittee of the Committee on Constitutional Organs) with the addition of that particular department’s deputies as
ad hoc members.
Unlike most parliamentary hearings, the CRdE controls the proceedings. The three-member panel of the CRdE then analyses the comments, suggestions, and counter-proposals from the public and parliamentary members. The CRdE is in no way bound to follow the suggestions from the public or parliamentary deputies.
The CRdE then issues a final report with the final boundaries of the constituencies for the decade.
Saintes
The
map for the city of Saintes (30 seats), the unit with the greatest number of constituencies, naturally attracted a lot of comments and took months to finish. One particular irate commenter was Radical Party faction leader Jean-Étienne Genêt, who was being drawn into the same district (
Saintes – Val-de-Salvail) as Liberal deputy Charles-Mathurin Morisson. Judge Marie-Grâce Langlais-Théorêt, as chair of Saintes CRdE, expelled Mr Genêt from the proceedings in the National Assembly during the parliamentary hearing.
Five Holdouts
As eventful and lengthy as the Saintes hearings were, there were five other departments whose CRdEs faced challenging circumstances. All of them finished later than the Saintes CRdE. Four of them – the Besbre, the Cenise, the Inde, and the Saine-et-Loine – gained seats in the reapportionment; the other one, the Scyotte, did not gain a seat but demographically shifted a lot within its boundaries. The vastly different proposed boundaries caused the hearings to become protracted.
Inde
The oddly-shaped southern department of the Inde, with only four seats, was not expected to be the scene of competing proposals. The CRdE of the Inde actually had
three proposals on the table when it started deliberations on January 2021: one from the IRE, one from the IRSEE, and an unsolicited one from the departmental council of the Inde which was supported by the deputy from Inde-2, Jean-Joseph Michaud (Liberal). All three submitted counter-proposals six months later, leaving CRdE chair Judge Philippe-Léonard Notebaert to craft a compromise proposal. Both of the Inde’s Returning Officer and Departmental Registrar voted
against Judge Notebaert’s proposal on October 2021. With the Inde’s CRdE unable to agree amongst themselves, an extraordinary CRdE was constituted by the IRE on January 2022. The CRdE of the department of Vauperté (which has only one seat) was assigned to the Inde.
The Vauperté CRdE, led by Judge Eugène-Luc Riedinger, started the process all over again for the Inde but plowed through the objections to its proposal. At the crux of the matter was to whether split the city of Creusenac and the disposition of the upper Arve valley comprising the intendance of Martinpuich. The final plan released on 6 June 2022 centred Inde-2 (
Creusenac-Ville) on the city of Creusenac, which was previously split between Inde-1 and Inde-2. The intendance of Martinpuich was split between the Inde-4 district anchored by Beauraing, while the major part of the intendance, including the Arve valley and the town of Martinpuich itself, remained in Inde-3. Inde-3 then gained the downstream (western) suburbs of Creusenac. This meant Inde-3 is the newly-created incumbent-less district; National deputy Baudouin-Tjeerd Blanckaert’s hometown is Beauraing, in Inde-4 (
Terres-de-Beauraing). Inde-3 (
Creusenac-Ouest – Martinpuich) is expected to be competitive in the upcoming election; Inde-1 (
Inde Bavaroise) has become safer for National deputy Huldéric Brosterhous as it was stripped of its slice of Creusenac.
New boundaries for the Inde.
Besbre
The Besbre gained one seat due to population growth in its four main cities of Niort, Dieppe, Bellegarde-sur-Loine, and Bellême. The formerly largely rural Besbre-1 was split into the mixed rural-suburban Besbre-1 (
Aubusson – Gâtine) and Besbre-2 (
Annebault – Basses-Landelles).
Aubusson – Gâtine now reaches the northern and eastern exurbs of Niort and the cross-river suburbs of Bellême.
Annebault – Basses-Landelles also extends to the outermost exurbs of Niort and Dieppe. Current Besbre-1 deputy Germain-Luc Corolleur objected to splitting his constituency that previously contained the rural intendancies of Aubusson and Annebault: “it’s disempowering to rural voices in favour of urban and suburban ones.” The town councils of Aubusson and Annebault also protested, even though these two towns anchor their respective new districts.
The city of Niort also commented about being split between the urban-suburban Besbre-6 (
Niort-en-amont) and Besbre-7 (
Niort-en-aval), even while the neighbouring city of Dieppe was entirely included in one constituency.
In the end, despite the lengthy time that it listened to the comments, the Besbre CRdE paid no heed to much of the suggestions. The Besbre CRdE made only minor boundary adjustments and issued the final report on 8 June 2022.
New boundaries for the Besbre and the Scyotte.
Scyotte
Neighbouring Scyotte also took a while to finish its maps even though its number of seats remained unchanged at nine. Compared to its rural hinterlands, the Tri-Cities area of Aubeterre, Neuilly-sur-Loine, and Montmirail grew faster – which meant that each city could now have their own standalone constituencies. Previously, the three city centres and their downtown cores were placed in Scyotte-6, while the rest of the cities were placed in suburban-rural districts. The current map reconfigures Scyotte-6 and its adjacent districts into the urban Scyotte-8 (
Aubeterre-Ville), the suburban Scyotte-7 (
Aubeterre-Métropole), the mixed urban-suburban Scyotte-5 (
Montmirail), and the mixed urban-rural Scyotte-2 (
Neuilly-sur-Loine – Pécorade). The three cities will no longer have a common district and will have their own ones. The changes also led to the creation of an entirely different Scyotte-6 (
Scyotte-Sud-Est), a rural seat encompassing the southeastern quarter of the department.
Complaints were mostly hinged on the splitting of the urban core of the Tri-cities area. The Scyotte CRdE emphasised respecting the political boundaries, as Aubeterre, Neuilly-sur-Loine, and Montmirail are under the jurisdiction of three different intendancies. The existence of the old Scyotte-6 was an anomaly according to the CRdE, having been created after the 2010 census when the population of the cities were smaller.
The new district boundaries set up a battle between two existing deputies: former Finance Minister Xavier-Bertrand Vergnet (Liberal) from the old Scyotte-6 and Pierre-Baudry Baucheton (National) from the old Scyotte-7. Both of their homes are now located in the new
Aubeterre-Ville district. The Scyotte CRdE finalised the boundaries on 10 June 2022.
Two Remaining
Only two remaining departments have yet to submit their maps, the Cenise (13 seats), and the Saine-et-Loine (23 seats). The Cenise CRdE is on the finalisation stage, while the Saine-et-Loine CRdE is stuck in the public hearing stage, with another round of public hearings set in the next two months.
translated by Thibault-Luke Burlbaugh
11 June 2022 - 1730h
