[pc86]

At the risk of just repeating a previous comment, if you actually want to live in a democracy you have to trust the electorate at some level. I don't know the specifics of this case but if it's clear cut corruption it should be easy to make that case to the electorate and absolutely destroy Le Pen in the election.

If it's not that easy, then banning her from running is even worse.

[eviks]

That's what happened - some officials trusted the electorate at some level and decided that the rules the electorate chose to make via their representatives should be followed. Those officials also trust the electorate to change the rules if they want to.

[animuchan]

That's a very charitable way of explaining away literally anything.

Let me try:

It's not like Putin started a war, but rather some officials trusted the electorate at some level and decided that the rules the electorate chose to make via their representatives should be followed. The representatives being Putin and friends. Those officials also trust the electorate to change the rules if they want to.

There were no actual attempts at a coup btw, so the electorate is evidently happy with this.

[eviks]

Your try failed due to major inconsistencies with reality, so no, turns out you can't explain literally anything.

[animuchan]

The list of inconsistencies you gave, while complete, is also empty.

[surgical_fire]

Only when the rules are followed.

For democracy to work properly politicians need to follow the rules.

[crazygringo]

That's where it gets tricky.

Ultimately, rules come from the people in a democracy.

If they decide they want a candidate who broke the rules, that's where it gets messy in political philosophy.

Should the democratic will of the people from years ago or decades ago override the democratic will of the people now? Of course that's the general idea of having constitutions and such, but it can only ever be a matter of degree, and there's no right answer as to how much.

[surgical_fire]

There's nothing messy about this.

Rules should be followed. If when rules are broken no punishment is applied, the rules are meaningless. Once rules become meaningless, everyone will be emboldened to break the rules, to the detriment of society as a whole.

If you want the rules changed, vote for them being changed, don't give free pass for any asshole to break them.

[crazygringo]

Of course it's messy.

> Rules should be followed.

But free, democratic elections is a "rule" too -- not just a rule, but a bedrock principle.

Why should people be prevented from voting now for someone because of previous rules made by a previous electorate? Why should someone from the past be allowed to nullify my preferred vote in the present?

There's always something inherently anti-democratic about preventing someone from running for office. The question is whether it's outweighed by other democratic concerns. It's messy.

[ahtihn]

> Why should people be prevented from voting now for someone because of previous rules made by a previous electorate? Why should someone from the past be allowed to nullify my preferred vote in the present?

All elections follow rules set by a previous electorate unless you want to first vote on defining the rules for an election every time you have an election.

If Trump were to actually run for a 3rd term, would you argue that he should be able to because term limits were set in place by a previous electorate?

[crazygringo]

Obviously they have to follow the rules for how to count votes, establish boundaries, etc.

But there is definitely a serious philosophical argument that term limits are inherently undemocratic.

I personally think they're necessary, but at the same time I realize they are undemocratic. They're literally taking away the ability for an electorate to freely choose.

All I'm saying is, the tradeoffs get messy. Restricting candidates from running can be a slippery slope. Look at what's happening in Turkey, where the popular opposition candidate was just barred from running. How do you know when you've gone too far? Barring candidates can corruptly entrench power, even when following the "rules" to the letter. What then?

[surgical_fire]

> not just a rule, but a bedrock principle.

Only when the rules are respected by everyone involved.

If we are playing football (or soccer for the barbarians across the pond), a core principle is to score goals. If in the middle of the game I punch you in the face, that principle stops mattering super fast.

> Why should people be prevented from voting now for someone because of previous rules made by a previous electorate?

Because that is how rules and regulations work. If you want them changed, change them properly, don't go breaking them because your pet right wing politician was punished for breaking them.

> There's always something inherently anti-democratic about preventing someone from running for office

I fundamentally disagree. The only thing anti-democratic is to allow someone that does not respect the democratic rules for running for office, for they will undermine democracy from within.

[psychlops]

> The only thing anti-democratic is to allow someone that does not respect the democratic rules for running for office, for they will undermine democracy from within.

Surely you see the catch in this belief. If there is a group of people who can "allow" others to run for election then the system is not democratic at its core.

[teg4n_]

> There's always something inherently anti-democratic about preventing someone from running for office.

i’m curious, do you think age minimums are ok? i feel like with this opinion have to throw out all restrictions on the ability to run for office to be consistent.

[darthrupert]

Nobody is prevented from voting by this sentence.

[rayiner]

You're acting like computers, or neutral actors external to the political system, decide "when rules are broken" and what "punishment" to apply.

That's entirely the wrong way to think about government. Government isn't about rules, it's about allocation of power. You have to think about government in terms of who is entrusted with power to make which decisions. If you entrust judges and lawyers to decide "when rules are broken" by elected officials, you give them power over those officials, and over voters.

Now that's okay to a degree, but the question is: where does the buck stop? If you design a system where the buck stops with lawyers and judges, then you've effectively given those lawyers and judges power to overrule voters. It's better to design a system where the lawyers and judges demur in situations like this, to avoid a "tail wagging the dog" situation where the legal system is invoked to resolve a political dispute.

[surgical_fire]

> If you entrust judges and lawyers to decide "when rules are broken" by elected officials, you give them power over those officials, and over voters.

What you are describing is the judiciary in any functioning democracy. Separation of powers requires an independent judiciary system.

They have to be unelected, so they keep their independence when evaluating if the laws are being applied according to the written law.

> Now that's okay to a degree, but the question is: where does the buck stop?

With proper separation of powers and an independent justice system, like the one that judged Le Pen and found her guilty.

[hollerith]

You seem to have failed to see the thorniness of the problem maybe because in the current instance (Le Pen's ban by the French judiciary) you agree with the outcome.

[aredox]

That's why we have nowadays Republics, with either written constitutions or fundamental legal texts like Habeas Corpus, not just pure democracies à la antique Athens.

The way out of your conundrum is to admit there is no "the People"; there is a collection of diverging, often incoherent trends, and no voting system is perfect (no voting system is even logical, as proven by Condorcet and Arrow[0])

[0] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/arrows-impossibility-th...

[crazygringo]

I'm using modern terminology. There's no relevant distinction here:

https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/democracy-and-republ...

The fundamental democratic principle is the same.

And we measure the will of the people in elections, without having to worry about Arrow... it's procedural.

[aredox]

Arrow is not at all "procedural", the French know it well: the 1995 presidential election ended with a Chirac vs Le Pen (the patriarch) duel, even though Lionel Jospin was the favorite and would have beaten both if he had faced them off... A clear example of non-transitivity in elections.

[crazygringo]

That's my point, sorry if it wasn't clear. Non-transitivity is resolved procedurally. We can theorize about Arrow all we want; in the meantime we can write rules that actually do produce electoral results.

[aredox]

Sorry, 2002 election.

[tpm]

Even Athens had ostracism, barring ostracised people from running for office.

[cauch]

The definition of democracy according to Ricœur is: > Est démocratique, une société qui se reconnaît divisée, c’est-à-dire traversée par des contradictions d’intérêt et qui se fixe comme modalité, d’associer à parts égales, chaque citoyen dans l’expression de ces contradictions, l’analyse de ces contradictions et la mise en délibération de ces contradictions, en vue d’arriver à un arbitrage.

In English, more-or-less: > A society is democratic if it acknowledge that it is divided, which means that it contains contradictory interests, and if it creates modality to analyse and debate these contradictions so that we can reach arbitration, with each citizen having an equal share in the debate.

I don't believe that a society is democratic if a majority of the people have decided something that is harmful or unfair to a minority without properly having debated if this decision is fair or not for the minority.

Because of that, no, it's not "whatever the majority decides". In a democracy, the will to guarantee justice and fairness is more important than "the people", and if they say "there is suspicion of fraud from this candidate but let's just close our eyes because we like this person or because it is profitable for us", this is clearly a behavior where they are not trying to reach a just and fair situation.

This is what distinguish democracy from ochlocracy.

And I don't understand how people can really defend that we should ignore the justice/fairness condition: what is the point of following "the people" when these people are not trying to be just and fair? How will it be a good society?

[rayiner]

> For democracy to work properly politicians need to follow the rules.

Democracy doesn't require that, except for a narrow subset of rules relating to voting and things like that.

The system you're describing isn't even democracy--it elevates lawyers and judges above the voters. Think about it: if there was a class of people you could trust to neutrally administer and enforce "the rules" then you wouldn't need multiple branches of government, separation of powers, etc. You could just make rules for everything, and trust the neutral arbiters to enforce those rules in politically neutral ways.

[glandium]

The problem is when rules don't apply the same to all politicians.

[surgical_fire]

That's a claim. You should back it up.

In the case of EU are there other politicians who embezzled funds that were let off the hook?

[glandium]

Here's one: Jacques Chirac was condemned in 2011 to 2 years with suspension (so, less than Le Pen) for something very similar (party members paid for fictitious jobs at the Mairie de Paris when he was mayor), and no ineligibility (so again, different consequences).

[matthewdgreen]

So it sounds like other politicians have indeed been convicted of similar things. The difference in punishment would then require you to examine the difference in the severity of the actions, which is beyond my pay grade.

[surgical_fire]

Your example was of a politician being condemned. It seems that the system does work as intended after all.

As for the length of punishment, we would have to look in detail what each did.

Two murders may result is different length of imprisonment.

[glandium]

> It seems that the system does work as intended after all.

Does it though? One common thread in the comments here is whether ineligibility is or is not warranted in political embezzlement cases. If hers is justified, how is the lack of Chirac's justified? That he was not seeking to be elected?

Whether or not it's actually a politically motivated difference, it's not a stretch that people question whether it is. Because it's a very convenient sentence. And let's face it, she was very likely to make it to the second round of the presidential election, and I can totally see a number of people being extremely bothered that it was a possibility, because if it did happen, if she wouldn't have won, it would have been very close (although who knows, a miracle could happen, and the political field might be less of a mess in 2 years).

[StopDisinfo910]

Unsurprising. The laws making ineligibility a sanction for embezzlement, “Lois pour la confiance dans la vie politique”, is from 2017.

Note also that the 2011 verdict was somewhat unusual because before 2010 when this was judged unconstitutional, Chirac condemnation would have led to him being removed from the voting list for five years and therefore de facto ineligible. Chirac was “lucky” to be sentenced during the seven years window when ineligibility wasn’t possible.

[guizmo]

But the case is about actions that happened before 2017. I think you're mistaken on which law motivates the judges decision in this case.

[piva00]

Counterpoint: USA's presidential elections 2024.

[xracy]

I mean, "trust the electorate" sounds like a nice ideal, but I think it conveniently ignores the shithose of news and information that makes its way into the public discourse. We can't agree on basic facts in most places. What hope do we have to "trust the electorate" when most people are given straight propaganda and they buy it whole cloth.

If you want to live in the world where we "trust the electorate" you first have to figure out how to make the electorate informed. In the meantime, I would gladly accept equally applied and adjudicated laws as a way to remove corrupt individuals from the electable population. A lot of places do this already, so making it so someone can't run for a given election cycle seems like a relatively small slap on the wrist compared to barring felons from ever being allowed to vote or hold office.

[jonathanstrange]

They applied a law against corruption for which Le Pen herself voted. At some point, you need to trust the laws that elected members of parliament have enacted and also apply it to politicians.

[tpm]

At some level, yes. At the level of letting convicted criminals run for the highest office, no, that would be stupid.

> it should be easy to make that case to the electorate

It turns out if you have enough money for endless propaganda it is easy to make any case to the electorate. And who will be making the case anyway? The state cannot because it has to be inpartial in the elections; their opponents have a clear agenda (they want to be the president) so it's easy to dismiss their case. So that leaves no one with standing.

> If it's not that easy, then banning her from running is even worse.

If the result is that a convicted criminal will not be elected into the highest office of the state, that's not a worse outcome, that's a perfect outcome.

[overfeed]

Allowing some people to be above the law is a bad idea in general. Selecting elected officials to be above the law in particularly is ill-thought-out, IMO. Perverse incentives abound . Elections shouldn't be a get-out-of-jail card.

[add-sub-mul-div]

Weird time in history to be a maximalist on trusting electorates.

[darthrupert]

You seem to deliberately ignore how easily people are manipulated. Just rulers have a responsibility to defend against that.

The marketplace of ideas as a primary political decision method was a dumb idea.