Are elections like buses? For dual French-British citizens like me, we’ve had the European ones and now, in addition to the UK, the snap French legislative elections mean voting twice more. As a new citizen, trips to the Leeds Novotel to queue up with north-east England’s French people are a thrill for me, but my sons are away all summer and less excited by the faff involved in doing some democracy.
It’s a bad time of year to get young people voting. I’m actually quite impressed that 60% of 18- and 19-year-olds are registered to vote, but I wonder how many will? The youth are busy, guys: recovering from exams and post-exam festivities, then getting the hell away from home, holidaying or working. I wondered briefly whether this influenced the election date decision in the UK, then two seconds contemplating the campaign to date reminded me that the Tories are incapable of that kind of strategic thinking.
My many helpful WhatsApps to my sons, with links to register for UK proxy or postal voting, were met with the usual radio silence (no one has unveiled a manifesto promise to stop me sending them blurry pictures of the hedgehog in our garden yet). So thanks, Rishi Sunak, I guess. It was only when I started texting daily “Vote or Rishi will conscript you” that they both staggered into action.
France is theoretically easier because we are allowed to vote online and my sons are keen to be counted in the fight against the far right, but oh, the admin. Neither was sent an ID for the voting “portal” and after frequent parental prompting, one son’s quest to get one fell at, I think, the third hurdle: he found instructions and downloaded an app, but couldn’t provide an ID card number. The other tried to request a proxy, but was thwarted by being required to take his passport to an outpost of French officialdom to prove his identity: he’s in rural Maine, so unless he meets a moose moonlighting as a French consular official, it’s not happening. French bureaucracy 2: democracy nil. But we (or at least I – sorry lads) haven’t given up yet.
• Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist
