Purrfect crime? Cat registers & votes in French primaries, but no one notices
As the French presidential race heats up with elections set for the spring of 2017, one party is now attracting some unwanted attention after a cat easily registered to vote in the primaries.
French journalist Raphaëlle Besse Desmoulières wrote a step-by-step guide on how she registered a feline under the name Gaston Lecat (see what she did there?) to vote for a candidate from the Green Party.
Europe Écologie – les Verts party member, Bruno Bernard, responded to the article saying that although they fight for animals’ rights, the cat couldn’t vote despite being registered. He also thanked Desmoulières for the financial aid she provided when registering Gaston.
https://t.co/7aJulVrBro
— Bruno Bernard (@brunobernard_fr) October 17, 2016
Nous défendons la cause animale mais votre chat ne pourra pas voter bien qu'inscrit.
Merci pour l'aide financière https://t.co/5Sb9vsM593
So how was it even possible to register a cat to vote? The option of voting via post required answering some basic questions online without any verification of identity. A voting bulletin later arrived by post that Desmoulières marked as ‘blank vote’ and sent back.
Gaston Lecat is the cat’s real name, although he doesn’t belong to the journalist behind the Le Monde article.
Comment j’ai inscrit mon chat à la primaire écolo (en vrai, c'est pas vraiment mon chat) https://t.co/E4SDhBDnfH
— R_Besse_Desmoulieres (@raphaellebd) October 17, 2016
In her article, Desmoulières poses an important question regarding the election system in France:
“Could these fictitious registrations alter a tight outcome?” she asks after telling her story.
Felines have been sabotaging elections for quite some time now. In Norway a heavy metal ‘legend’ has been forced to serve his local council for the next two years after a joke campaign saw him actually elected into office.
“My campaign was a picture of me holding my cat saying, ‘Please don’t vote for me’,” he said.
Russian cats have been taking things further. Just this year, Barsik the cat from Barnaul, which is in Russia’s picturesque Altay Region, was registered as a candidate for the parliamentary elections on an official website that had been set up by the ruling party ahead of the race.
And later Hippo the cat was also set to stand for the Russian State Duma.
READ MORE: In Hank the Cat’s pawprints: Hippo the Cat to stand for Russian parliament
Turn the clocks back to 2012 and elections in the US were just as juicy. Hank the cat ran for US Senate in the State of Virginia.
