Limoges, out of about the same number, there are only 150 voters. At
Paris, out of 81,400 electors, in August, 1790, 67,200 do not vote, and,
three months later, the number of absentees is 71,408.[1212]
Thus for every elector that votes, there are four, six, eight, ten, and
even sixteen that abstain from voting.--In the election of deputies,
the case is the same. At the primary meetings of 1791, in Paris, out of
81,200 registered names more than 74,000 fail to respond. In the Doubs,
three out of four voters stay away. In one of the cantons of the Côte
d'Or, at the close of the polls, only one-eighth of the electors remain
at the counting of the votes, while in the secondary meetings the
desertion is not less. At Paris, out of 946 electors chosen only 200 are
found to give their suffrage; at Rouen, out of 700 there are but
160, and on the last day of the ballot, only 60. In short, "in all
departments," says an orator in the tribune, "scarcely one out of five
electors of the second degree discharges his duty."
In this manner the majority hands in its resignation. Through inertia,
want of forethought, lassitude, aversion to the electoral hubbub, lack
of political preferences, or dislike of all the political candidates, it
shirks the task which the constitution imposes on it. Most certainly is
has no taste for the painstaking burden of being involved in a league
(of human rights). Men who cannot find time once in three months to
drop a ballot in the box, will not come three times a week to attend
the meetings of a club. Far from meddling with the government, they
abdicate, and as they refuse to elect it, they cannot undertake to
control it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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