Only 106 326 inhabitants participated in the last vote that allows residents to choose certain public investments, or 26% less than during the previous consultation.
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In Paris, the participatory democracy of which Anne Hidalgo has made one of his great political markers knows failure. The Parisians shot the last edition of the participatory budget, which allows the residents to choose certain public investments. Only 106,326 persons took part in the vote organized from 9 to 28 September, or 26% less than at the previous consultation, in 2019, according to the first results transmitted to the world by the town hall of Paris.
Since its launch, in 2014, the Parisian participatory budget has stopped attracting more participants. Of 40,745, the number of voters was gradually rising at 143,489 in 2019, 6.5% of Paris voters. It is an “essential annual democratic appointment, emblematic of our desire to reinvent politics,” We welcomed Anne Hidalgo in 2020, during the campaign of the municipal. “It is hoped that the voters will be even more numerous this time,” said In early September Anouch Toranian, his citizen participation assistant. This is the opposite that happened.
“Coup de cœur, I love”, “why not”
Three factors were able to accumulate to achieve this net retreat. On the one hand, the voting procedure has been revised. It was previously sufficient from an e-mail address to vote. The inhabitants behind a project could swell the results by multiplying digital identities. The new device in principle prevents this kind of artifice. On the other hand, the absence of participatory budget in 2020, because of municipal elections then Covid-19, was able to blur the benchmarks. Finally, “with the health crisis, some are still reluctant to meet around a urn,” Anouch Anouch Toranian.
In total, “we could have feared more wasteful”, adds the assistant. Results, it wants especially to see the fact that the participatory budget is anchored in the landscape, and that the Parisians have not rejected the new experience experienced this year, the “majority judgment”. Instead of simply choosing three or four investments on a list, voters were called upon to assign a positive or negative assessment to as many projects as they wanted. Choice: “Coup de cœur, I love”, “I like, it’s interesting”, “why not”, or “I’m not convinced.”.
On average, Paris voters gave their opinion on eleven projects, such as the renovation of the fire pump of the Castle of Bagatelle (16 e arrondissement), the addition of playgrounds In some squares of the e or the opening of bicycle repair workshops across the city. “With more than 1.2 million opinions expressed, Parisians seized this new method of voting,” says Anouch Taranian. This is the first time that the “majority judgment”, this nuanced voting system in which some have a solution to the democratic crisis, was tested on more than 100,000 voters.
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