New Media types over there have to do their pre-election analysis and speculation in code:
The French are going to the polls on Sunday to pick their next president, and until the last polling station closes at 8 p.m., it is forbidden to release polls and preliminary results to avoid influencing voters and uphold fair play.
[snip]
On Friday, rebellious Internet bloggers began laying the foundations of subversion by developing codes to circumvent the ban on publishing results before it is time.
So, if your French friend tweets “the Netherlands are beating Hungary at half time,” he may actually mean that Socialist Party candidate François Hollande has emerged from the first round of the election with a lead on French President Nicolas Sarkozy—who has Hungarian roots.
Via Legal Insurrection. Always interesting to see what other cultures consider to be an intolerable affront to their rights – and what they don’t so consider, huh?
Moe Lane
Of course, even in the US, companies with press releases may request – and get – press cooperation in disclosing information only after a certain time. But it is interesting that in France, keeping people in the dark is considered conducive to better voting.
Most of modern politics is about the meta-level considerations, anyway. I guess this is some sort of attempt to push it back to being about the basic issues.