U.S. Perspectives on the French Election

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/24/opinion/us-perspectives-on-the-french-election.html

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To the Editor:

Re “Voters Embrace Outsiders in Election to Lead France” (front page, April 24):

While it is encouraging that Emmanuel Macron leads Marine Le Pen by significant margins in almost all polling done to date, I cringe when recollecting the smug assurances the media and pollsters gave us that Donald Trump would never win the election here in the United States. Let’s hope it’s not another “Whoops!” moment when we all read the news on May 7.

CHRISTOPHER MAYERHARTLAND, VT.

To the Editor:

The outcome of the first round of the French presidential election, in which Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen finished first and second, exposes a serious flaw in the French voting system. France uses runoff voting: In the first round, each voter votes for a single candidate, and (unless a candidate gets more than 50 percent) the two candidates with the most votes face each other in a runoff.

According to most polls, the third-place candidate, François Fillon, would have easily defeated Ms. Le Pen in a head-to-head contest. Thus, the fact that she — not he — has made it through to the runoff is a perversion of democracy. This occurred because Mr. Macron and Mr. Fillon — both centrists — split much of the first-round vote, enabling the far-right Ms. Le Pen to beat out Mr. Fillon for second place.

France could avoid such anomalies by replacing runoff voting with majority rule, in which each voter ranks the candidates, and the winner is the one whom a majority of voters prefer to each opponent.

American elections would also benefit from this system. But that’s a story for another day.

ERIC S. MASKIN, CAMBRIDGE, MASS.

The writer, a professor of economics and mathematics at Harvard, won the 2007 Nobel Prize in economics.