nchise is extended
to all male inhabitants who have attained the age of twenty-one, and
who are not convicts, bankrupts, under guardianship, or in active
military or naval service. Of educational or property qualifications
there are none. The only requirements are that the voter shall have
his name inscribed on the electoral lists and shall be able to prove a
residence of six months in the commune in which he proposes to cast
his ballot. The conditions of the franchise are prescribed by the
state; but the keeping and the annual revision of the electoral lists
devolves upon the commune, and the lists are identical for communal,
district, departmental, and national elections. The French
registration system is notably effective and, as compared with the
British, inexpensive.

[Footnote 478: Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I.,
302-308.]

*345. Electoral Unit and Parliamentary Candidacies.*--The electoral area
in France is the arrondissement, an administrative subdivision of (p. 318)
the department. Each arrondissement returns one deputy, unless its
population exceeds 100,000, in which case it is divided into
single-member constituencies, one for each 100,000 or remaining
fraction thereof. A fresh apportionment is made after each
quinquennial census, when to each of the eighty-six departments is
allotted a quota of representatives proportioned to population. The
present method of election, under which the individual elector votes
within his arrondissement or district for one deputy only, is known as
the _scrutin d'arrondissement_. Established in 1876, the _scrutin
d'arrondissement_ was employed until 1885, when, at the behest of
Gambetta, a change was made to a system under which deputies for an
entire department were voted for on a general ticket, as, for example,
presidential electors are voted for in an American state. This
system--the so-called _scrutin de liste_--was maintained in operation
only until 1889, when the _scrutin d'arrondissement_ was
re-established.[479]

[Footnote 479: Laws of June 16, 1885, and February
13, 1889; Dodd, Modern Constitutions, I., 316-318.]

The full membership of the Chamber is elected simultaneously, for a
four-year term, save in the event that the Chamber shall be sooner
dissolved. No nomination, or similar formality, is required of the
candidate. To be eligible, however, he must be a qualified voter and
as muc