[smooc]

I've heard people on the radio (ha yes I listen to that ;-)) that they disagree with Le Pen being banned from running for president.

That seems strange to me as this was public (eu) money that was funneled into her own movement, i.e. bolstering her popularity in some way. So letting her run in the elections would basically mean she would get away with the fraude.

[pc86]

At the risk of just repeating a previous comment, if you actually want to live in a democracy you have to trust the electorate at some level. I don't know the specifics of this case but if it's clear cut corruption it should be easy to make that case to the electorate and absolutely destroy Le Pen in the election.

If it's not that easy, then banning her from running is even worse.

[eviks]

That's what happened - some officials trusted the electorate at some level and decided that the rules the electorate chose to make via their representatives should be followed. Those officials also trust the electorate to change the rules if they want to.

[surgical_fire]

Only when the rules are followed.

For democracy to work properly politicians need to follow the rules.

[piva00]

Counterpoint: USA's presidential elections 2024.

[xracy]

I mean, "trust the electorate" sounds like a nice ideal, but I think it conveniently ignores the shithose of news and information that makes its way into the public discourse. We can't agree on basic facts in most places. What hope do we have to "trust the electorate" when most people are given straight propaganda and they buy it whole cloth.

If you want to live in the world where we "trust the electorate" you first have to figure out how to make the electorate informed. In the meantime, I would gladly accept equally applied and adjudicated laws as a way to remove corrupt individuals from the electable population. A lot of places do this already, so making it so someone can't run for a given election cycle seems like a relatively small slap on the wrist compared to barring felons from ever being allowed to vote or hold office.

[jonathanstrange]

They applied a law against corruption for which Le Pen herself voted. At some point, you need to trust the laws that elected members of parliament have enacted and also apply it to politicians.

[tpm]

At some level, yes. At the level of letting convicted criminals run for the highest office, no, that would be stupid.

> it should be easy to make that case to the electorate

It turns out if you have enough money for endless propaganda it is easy to make any case to the electorate. And who will be making the case anyway? The state cannot because it has to be inpartial in the elections; their opponents have a clear agenda (they want to be the president) so it's easy to dismiss their case. So that leaves no one with standing.

> If it's not that easy, then banning her from running is even worse.

If the result is that a convicted criminal will not be elected into the highest office of the state, that's not a worse outcome, that's a perfect outcome.

[add-sub-mul-div]

Weird time in history to be a maximalist on trusting electorates.

[darthrupert]

You seem to deliberately ignore how easily people are manipulated. Just rulers have a responsibility to defend against that.

The marketplace of ideas as a primary political decision method was a dumb idea.

[agumonkey]

Well if that media is biased toward far-right they will push for disagreement.

[surgical_fire]

> The official position appears to be that a political party is given money by the EU but can only use it if they're pro-EU. A party that wishes the EU to be smaller or for their country to exit is then considered to be engaged in "national" politics rather than "European" politics, which makes their spending the money they were given as a political party, to do politics, "embezzlement".

No need for the scary quotation marks. This was plain embezzlement, as you very aptly described.