Heis an open secret that no one has learned about until now. Therefore, the young researcher Aurélien Laparro needs to have a great interest in this subject. What was supposed to be a master’s thesis eventually turned into a fascinating 300-page book, the result of three years of research, which leads us to tell the story of this great puzzle III.e and IVe Republic.
“Based on these discoveries, I said to myself that we should finally write the first history of voting in the DPR. And this story, among other things, is about the ballot boxes, the deputies who kept the ballot boxes of their colleagues and cast votes in their places. Despite the importance of this phenomenon, the topic was completely ignored. The works of certain historians mention it in a few lines. But never again. And all this because it is a strictly prohibited practice, therefore almost completely absent from the commonly used official sources by researchers,” he explained. author of When deputies don’t vote for themselves (Hémispheres Editions, 2025).
Square system: when one person elects one hundred deputies
Under IIIe Republican, each representative had a small black cardboard box containing white (for) and blue (against) ballots printed with their names. When an MP was absent to return to his constituency or attend to his affairs, he would entrust his box to a trusted colleague. These deputies gradually accumulated dozens of boxes on their desks, even putting them away once their colleagues returned.
They were nicknamed “cages”. During voting, as officials escort the ballot boxes through the aisles, the box clerk then opens all the boxes, selects a white or blue ballot for each, and places them into the ballot box. In a few minutes a man selects fifty, eighty, sometimes a hundred of his companions, both present and absent.
At first, in the middle of the 19th centurye In this century, the practice is quite accommodating: an absentee MP entrusts his box to a close colleague, sometimes even to a constituent’s neighbor or professional colleague. “This is the story of a parliament originally built on individualism inherited from the Enlightenment. This practice served first the personal interests of certain absent deputies,” explains Aurélien Laparro. But gradually, the system became structured: territorial, corporate and political bodies emerged until the parliamentary group regained control over the system.
Georges Saumande, king of Parliament
In his book, Aurélien Laparro gives a central place to an elected official: Georges Saumande. His name may not mean anything to you – only one boulevard in Périgueux still bears his name – but he was one of the most influential politicians of the inter-war Parliament. Representative of the Dordogne from 1893 to 1928, Saumande was neither minister nor grand tribune. However, between 1919 and 1928, he became the most powerful man in the French Parliament. The weapon? He controlled between 90 and 120 ballot boxes, thereby electing around a hundred of his colleagues – enough to topple any government.
Raymond Poincaré consulted him before the vote of no confidence to find out whether his government would survive. Deputy and minister Georges Mandel attempted to entrust his company to him to gain his favor. The press called him “the master of the majority” and joked: “The day Mr. Saumande increases his box collection to 301, he will be confident of his majority, and we will see Saumande replace Poincaré! »
The Quaestor was housed in the Palais-Bourbon, present from morning to evening, and he had even organized a network of assistants to replace him. Without ever officially governing, Saumande determined the fate of laws and ministries. He had become the invisible ruler of the Republic.
A IIIe The Republic is more structured than we imagine
Beyond anecdotes that may make you smile, the researcher’s work allows us to rethink the caricatured and ideological images that circulate around III.e Republic: a noisy, disorganized, and sometimes chaotic collection. “Until now, we were told that the House of Representatives was not very structured, there was no discipline in voting, and it was enough to talk well to be convincing,” explains Aurélien Laparro. “Now, I believe that a phrase widely used by deputies at the time best sums up what really happened: “A speech often makes me change my mind, but never makes me change my vote.” And this makes sense because they themselves don’t vote! »
The discovery of the box radically changed our understanding of IIIe Republic. “We realize that there is not only voting discipline under IIIe Republican, but from 1928 there was a transition from the Chamber of Deputies to what I call the “House of Parliamentary Groups””, emphasizes the researcher. After Georges Saumande resigned from office in 1928, the parliamentary group effectively regained control over the ballot box system, and ultimately regulated the ballot and the parliamentary life that accompanied it.
A practice that disappeared in 1958
This discovery invites us to reconsider IIIe Republic, according to the author. “This in no way prevented this regime from becoming the most long-lasting regime in our history and allowing the implementation of the main laws that still regulate the functioning of our society: secularism, freedom of association, freedom of the press, schools, first income tax, paid leave…”, recalls the researcher.
“We often read history teleologically, meaning we don’t see thirde and IVe Republic as an irregular beginning of the letter Ve A perfect and structured republic whose stability is often dreamed of,” analyzes Aurélien Laparro. “This work should make it possible to change our interpretation of this regime. I, I, Ie A Republic is in reality a mature and structured democracy in which Parliament and political power are organized. It was the most durable of the Republics and produced many of the laws that still govern our collective organizations today. »
To find
Kangaroo today
Answer
The practice of squares did not disappear definitively until 1958, with the advent of Ve Republic and the introduction of electronic voting the following year. Therefore, for more than a century, French democracy was based on a paradox: the people’s representatives, elected by the electorate, did not elect themselves.
