The French are sticklers for the privacy — one might even say, the sanctity — of the ballot box. If you inquire who got their vote in Sunday’s first round of the presidential elections, they look at you as if you had asked them how their constipation was coming along.
One man I spoke to on Monday told me he didn’t even know which way his wife had voted.
At the polling station in Le Touquet, where Citizen Macron is registered, the President and his wife, having established their credentials and disinfected their hands, were filmed dutifully picking up separate slips for each of the 12 candidates, only one of which would be placed in the envelope provided and deposited in the urne. This was so that no one could know for certain which of the democratic dozen had secured their vote.
